The rise to supremacy and decline of big powers are all subject to the laws of geopolitics. Geographers should keep up with the pace of the times, and accurately get an overall understanding of the interests of the state to seize the opportunity to contribute to the great rejuvenation of Chinese nation. However, the lack of criticism for history and philosophy of geopolitics will make it unable to understand the practice of geopolitical theory accurately and effectively. Therefore, this paper introduces the development of the critical geopolitics, which summarizes three characteristics of critical geopolitics so as to explain the four classical geopolitical theories. In order to simplify the explanation and interpretation, this paper first proposes an analytical framework of four classical geopolitical theories. Secondly, we explain "The Geographical Pivot of History" put forward by Mackinder as a focal point. Lastly, we draw a conclusion on the four classic critical geopolitical theories. The conclusion made through the critical interpretation is that the classical theory of geopolitics is not only scientific, but also hypothetic and idealistic to some extent. The construction of the classical geopolitical theory is established based on international geopolitical structure, spatial distribution of the interests of the state and space conflicts between countries, which shows the identity of theoretical constructionist, and reflects the historical, social and situational sides of the geopolitical theory and geography - power structure.
As a vital geo-strategic area for China and the US, South Asia plays an important role in international geopolitics. On one hand, China's maritime transportation safety and the stability of western frontier are closely related with South Asia. On the other hand, the US needs to implement "Asia Pacific rebalancing strategy" by means of the support of South Asia. Therefore, how to analyze the changes and evolution mechanism of geopolitical influence (i.e., geo-influence) of China and the US in South Asia, has become the key research question. This paper proposes the index system and mathematical model of geo-influence by combining geography, international relations and political perspective. Furthermore, the paper explores the main influencing factors and driving mechanism of geo-influence evolution by analyzing the spatio-temporal changes of geo-influence of China and the US in South Asia. In this study, five results can be concluded as follows: (1) The geo-influence of China and the US in South Asia has been rising slowly with small fluctuations from 2003 to 2012. What’s more, the geo-influence of China grew faster than that of the US. (2) The evolution of national geo-influence is a slow process. From 2003 to 2012, the changes of geo-influence of China and the US in South Asia fluctuated within a narrow range. (3) Hard power, soft power, interdependent power and friction force are the main effect factors of geo-influence. Hard power and soft power are the dominant factors, which play a pulling role. Interdependent power is the auxiliary factor, which plays a pushing role. Friction force is the weakening factor, which plays a reversing role. (4) The driving mechanism of geo-influence evolution of China and the US in South Asia involves geographical location, geopolitics, geo-economy and geo-culture. Among them, geographical location acts as the restricting force; geopolitics acts as the leading force; geo-economy acts as the driving force; geo-culture acts as the radiate force. (5) National hard power is not equal to the geo-influence. One strong country does not necessarily have the same strong geo-influence. Thus there is a non-linear relationship between national hard power and geo-influence. Hard power does play a leading role, but it cannot determine the strength and speed of geo-influence changes.
The relationship between urban rail transit development and commercial space evolution is a hot issue in the studies of urban transportation and business geography. The paper aims to provide insights into the macro and micro characteristics and spatio-temporal evolution of retail business at transfer hubs of Guangzhou Metro. The R cluster analysis is used to classify the 14 transfer hubs of the Guangzhou urban rail transit system into different types based on connectivity and surrounding business. The spatio-temporal evolution process and morphological features of retail business space at transfer hubs are examined as well. Furthermore, the influence of interaction between the transportation and commerce on business space at transfer hubs is explored. According to the research, four highlights are unveiled: (1) The business space at transfer hubs of Guangzhou Metro can be classified into four types, namely Gateway, Regional, Hub and Community centers. (2) At the macro-level, the evolution of business space at the transfer hubs experienced three phases: the point clusters (during 1997-2003), surface clusters (during 2004-2008), and radial clusters (during 2009-2012) in the past 16 years. There exists a coupling effect between the spatial expansion of the rail transit network and the growth of business centers from the inner cities to the suburbs. At the initial stage of urban rail transit, the metro system played an important role in boosting the prosperity of Gateway business centers. Later on, the function of rail transportation gradually radiated from downtown to suburban areas. In this radiation process, the metro system has accelerated the development of business construction at the areas with high consumption capacities and also formation of other metro business spaces such as Regional, Hub and Community business centers. (3) At the micro-level, business space at the transfer hubs can be divided into business-oriented and transit-oriented. (4) The influence of interaction between the transportation and commerce on business space at transfer hubs mainly goes as the following four aspects: strengthening the core competitiveness of the Gateway business centers, improving the service levels and functions of the Regional business centers, confining the multi-form operation of the Hub business centers and promoting the formation and development of the Community business centers.
Retail formats refer to the forms and patterns of managing commercial enterprises that differ in their market orientations and locations. The outcomes of the location choices of different forms of business enterprises determine their specific commercial structures. In recent years, spatial distribution and location decisions relating to emerging formats such as chain supermarkets have emerged as a new research area in China. This study aims to reveal differences in the spatial distribution characteristics of different retail formats and the factors influencing their location choices in Changchun, China. Based on 2013 survey data for large-scale commercial sites in the central district of Changchun, the study focuses on six types of retail formats: specialty stores, exclusive shops, department stores, supermarkets, warehouses, and markets. Point pattern analysis and ordinal logistic regression analysis were performed to explore the locational features and determinants of large-scale commercial sites in Changchun. The findings of this study suggest that the spatial distribution of large-scale commercial sites in Changchun entails coexistence of concentration in the core area and diffusion in the peripheral area. This agglomeration feature was clearly apparent in the city center and business centers. Moreover, the spatial distribution of commercial activities and spatial agglomeration features varied considerably according to regional scalar differences. The primary determinants of the spatial distribution of commercial sites were: type of commercial activity, land price, transport accessibility, and agglomeration. Population density and business environment factors did influence the location choice of retail outlets to some extent, but this influence was not significant. Each of these determinants was found to have its own effects on the spatial distribution of different kinds of commercial sites. Thus, specialty and department stores were usually aggregated in small regions, demonstrating lower performance levels that were dependent on population density, transport accessibility, and the business environment. Exclusive shops and markets, affected by land prices and transportation accessibility, showed higher levels of agglomeration at a larger regional scale, especially markets. The weak dependence of supermarkets on these determinants and their characteristically discrete distribution indicate that their spatial layouts were the result of competition and the city’s market environment. Warehouses were only aggregated in small-scale areas at the border of the city because of land prices, industrial characteristics, and transport accessibility.
The characteristics of the profit-oriented land price temporal-spatial evolution in Hefei from 2007 to 2011 are analyzed using the GIS spatial analysis method. Results show that the temporal-spatial evolution of land price in Hefei is characterized by circular-layered expansion, axial-gradient-form extension, spatial variation and spatial differentiation. Moreover, aided by remote sensing images, this paper analyzes the characteristics of spatial evolutions resulting from previous versions of the overall urban plan for Hefei and the 2006 version of the urban master planning for Hefei. According to the analysis results, the spatial structure and characteristics of the urban land price in 2007 are the important manifestation of the urban spatial structure brought about by the four versions, made up between 1956 and 2001, of the overall urban plan and their implementations, while the 2006 urban master planning and its implementation are the important factors influencing the spatial-temporal evolution of urban land price between 2007 and 2011. The expansion, displacement and jump of urban center lead to the circular-layered expansion and local spatial variation of land price; the leading direction of urban development results in the formation of concentration axis in the peak land-price area; the evolution of urban spatial structure results in the spatial differentiation of land price; the layout of the generation of newly emerged space results in the spatial differentiation and spatial variation of urban land price; and the spatial-temporal density of land transfers results in the spatial variation of urban land price. Therefore, the spatial-temporal evolution of land price is significantly influenced by the expansion and displacement of urban center, the alteration of the leading development direction, the evolution of spatial structure and form, the generation of new urban space, and the space selection in the implementation of the urban master planning. And the spatial characteristics of the temporal-spatial evolution of land price are an important basis for the adjustment of the strategies for urban space development. Therefore, the response strategies in the adjustment of urban space are: to strengthen the generation of new urban space, to displace the industrial zones in the leading direction of urban development, to establish new functional groups by including recreation center, to construct major infrastructure and public service facilities based on the urban-space transformation and the land price temporal-spatial evolution, to optimize the urban space structure featuring multiple centers and multiple groups, and to achieve gradual development of each sub-area.
In the last three decades, urban China has experienced drastic market-oriented reform, which has led to enormous transformation of urban spatial structure, as well as to the change of land-use pattern. Some researches at home and abroad have noticed possible impacts of land-use pattern on residents' daily commuting behaviors. However, the results are quite different. Western researchers proved that mixed land-use pattern has positive impacts on home-work separation, and a lot of domestic scholars argued that mixed land-use pattern should be encouraged in urban China. Conversely, few researchers, like Ding and Zheng, objected to mixed land-use pattern in urban China. So far, there has been limited empirical research on the impact of land-use mixed degree on home-work separation in Chinese cities. This paper attempts to contribute to the gap by providing empirical evidence for mixed land-use pattern and its impact on home-work separation in Beijing. Using the land-use map in 2004 and large-scale survey data of land use in 2005, based on multilevel model, we analyze the impact of land-use mixed degree on resident's home-work separation. The primary innovation of this paper is that, we prove the possible influences of working place attributes on individual home-work separation. More importantly, we use a more complex multilevel model in this paper, called cross-classified multilevel model based on Bayesian Monte Carlo Markov Chain method. Several conclusions are drawn as follows: (1) Land-use mixed degree of sub-district has influences on residents' home-work separation. The probability of bearing long home-work separation for residents who live in sub-districts with higher land-use mixed degree is small. (2) There are significant variances of residents' home-work distance both in living and working sub-district, implying that the correlated impact of living and working sub-district on home-work separation should be given more attention in future researches. (3) Residents' economic attribute and housing ownership have significant influence on home-work separation. The probability of bearing long home-work distance for residents living in Danwei houses is smaller than those living in commercial or affordable houses. (4) Multilevel modelling provides a more flexible and effective framework for the analysis of geographic data containing complicated nest relationship. As geography develops, MLM would be very useful in the field of urban issues.
How to arrange individual travel and activities under various spatial and temporal constraints is an increasingly important challenge to people's daily life in modern society. Based on a person-based perspective, accessibility measures mainly concern the extent of an individual to choose places in order to participate in different activities in space and time. This paper, based on the concepts of time geography, proposes a person-based spatiotemporal accessibility analysis method to measure individual access to urban opportunities in space and time. Specifically, the accessibility is evaluated by the attractiveness of urban service facilities to an individual, meanwhile opening hours of urban service facilities, minimum activity participation time and individual preferences are taken into account as restrictive conditions, to make the accessibility measures more relevant to an individual's desires and situations. Using geographic datasets of spatial locations, open hours and review scores of urban food service facilities and urban road networks, along with a dataset of individual space-time budget and individual preferences, we present this method with a case study of individual accessibility to food service facilities in Beijing, China. This shows how dining out candidates are mined and assessed to derive recommendations for individuals. This study can be useful for applications, such as individual travel-activity guide and location based services.
The urban housing distribution system in China has transformed from a redistribution system to a market-oriented distribution system. This shift has profoundly affected the role changes for the government, work unit, and market under housing tenure governance. This study used the fifth and sixth census data of the original eight districts of Guangzhou to determine the role changes for the government, work unit, and market in terms of housing supply, distribution, and spatial configuration. First, the change in the structure of housing tenure in Guangzhou from 2000 to 2010 reflected several characteristics. For instance, the work unit no longer assumed a role in housing supply, the affordable housing supply of the government was inadequate, and the market became the main supplier of housing. Second, the choice in housing tenure during this period reflected the gradual weakening of the institutional relationship between the household and the government or work unit. Moreover, the market linkages between the household and the market increasingly became a leading linkage. The variables manifesting market relationship, such as life cycle and household income, were expected to have a distinct impact on the choice in housing tenure of urban residents. Third, the restructuring of the spatial pattern in housing tenure indicated that from 2000 to 2010, the proportion of system internal housing substantially declined in the central city and was gradually replaced by system external housing. System internal housing provided by the government became more concentrated in the suburban or near suburban areas. These conditions demonstrated the reversal of the spatial distribution of system internal and external housing to some extent. These changes in spatial patterns were the result of the excessive marketization of housing sources among urban residents, changes in housing suppliers, differences in land rental costs, and so on. Although the government played an important role in the regulation of the housing market, the provision of affordable housing was evidently inadequate, as indicated in the housing tenure structure after the work unit no longer assumed its task in the housing supply. Hence, housing sources for urban residents showed evident trends of excessive marketization. The government should expand the construction of affordable housing and ensure that location choices for affordable housing are dispersed, and regional balanced, and avoid suburban to avoid duple-marginalization in residential space and social space for residents in affordable communities. With the development of the urban housing market, the impacts of certain factors relating to the market relationship between households and the market on urban residents' housing preference should be closely examined in the process of large-scale real estate marketization development and the formulation of policies that will allow the government to regulate housing development. These factors include changes of household structure and social economic status for urban residents under the background of rapid globalization, modernization and marketization.
The regional development research on commercial banks has always been the focus of financial geography research. At present, there is still debate on whether the geographical decentralization level of commercial bank loan can positively influence bank performance. This paper uses the loan data of 13 listed commercial banks in China releasing to each province during 2007-2013 to analyze the loan releasing geographical distribution characteristics of large-sized commercial banks and small and medium-sized commercial banks and the geographic variation trend of non-performing loans. On such basis, it uses stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) and the basic model of Battese and Collie (1995) to build the trans-log profit function model to conduct empirical analysis of the influence of geographical decentralization level of commercial bank loan on the efficiency of bank profits. Research results show that: (1) Increasing the geographical decentralization level of loan can boost the revenue and profit efficiency for commercial banks in the process of banking operation; (2) Large-sized commercial banks, due to the effect of national policies, cover broader loan releasing areas, and the loan releasing proportion in the central and western regions is significantly higher than that of the small and medium-sized commercial banks, and the average profit efficiency has always been higher than that of the small and medium-sized commercial banks. However, in recent years, with the gradually increasing geographical decentralization level of small and medium-sized commercial banks loan, the gap of profit efficiency between the two has been narrowed; (3) At present, the loan business of some small and medium-sized commercial banks in China still belongs to the relationship loan, and raising the geographical decentralization level of loan will lower their profit efficiency. Therefore, the diversified business operation should be carefully handled and cannot blindly follow it.
Under the background of global economic integration, regional economic growth is not isolated in geographical space. Economic growth relies on both internal and external factors. At the regional level, global economic integration shows the form of regional and local economic cooperation and integration. In the open economic system, regions struggle for more benefits through adjusting local development policies. Propelled by the new round of economic growth and urbanization, China's regional economic development presents a trend of much more profound regional cooperation. Therefore, this paper intends to explore the spatial spillover effects of regional economic growth by analyzing the case of Guangdong province from 1990 to 2010. Located in South China, Guangdong has witnessed dramatic development since the reform and opening-up started, and has become the largest economic region in China. However, behind its economic success, it is facing great challenges arising from unbalanced growth and intensified social injustice. Generally, Guangdong can be divided into four parts, namely, the Pearl River Delta, eastern Guangdong, western Guangdong and northern Guangdong, among them, the Pearl River Delta developed much better and faster. This is because the Pearl River Delta region attracted more capital investments and human resources with better natural resources, location conditions and supporting policies. As a result, increasing regional inequality and differences threatens national unity and social stability to some extent. Hence, regional disparity becomes an important issue in Guangdong's geographical research, as well as in regional development studies. In this paper, the scale variance analysis and statistics showed that the regional development at the county level made the greatest contribution among the three scales of county, municipality and region. The Kernel density estimation indicated that there was an increasing inequality in GDP per capita at county level from 1990 to 2010. Moreover, the inequality in 2000-2010 was larger than that in 1990-2000. The spatial Markov chain analysis revealed that the spatial spillover effects did exist in economic development at county-level, which means, if a county is adjacent to a richer county, its economy has a relatively high possibility to increase, and vice versa. The spatial lag regression model and the geographically weighted regression analyses indicated that globalization, decentralization and investments were the core driving forces of Guangdong's spatial spillover effects, and marketization, urbanization and savings were the secondary driving forces for increasing the regional inequality.
Energy eco-efficiency is a concept trying to integrate ecological and economic benefits arising from energy utilization and serves as a measurement of the efficiency in energy-environment-economy system. Based on the SBM model considering undesirable output, this paper first measured the energy eco-efficiency of provinces in China from 1997 to 2012. Then it analyzed the spatial distribution and the evolution of energy eco-efficiency from three aspects—scale, intensity, and grain of spatial patterns; and finally, it verified the spatial spillover effects and the influencing factors of energy eco-efficiency in different provinces by means of spatial econometric model. Conclusions can be drawn as follows: (1) the overall energy eco-efficiency is relatively low in China, of which energy-inefficient areas account for about 40%. Provinces of Guangdong, Hainan, and Fujian enjoy the highest energy eco-efficiency, but provinces of Ningxia, Gansu, Qinghai, and Xinjiang are representative areas with low efficiency, thus making a U-shaped evolution pattern of China's overall energy eco-efficiency; and in local regions, there are four evolution patterns: increasing, fluctuating, mutating, and leveling. (2) At the provincial level, China's energy eco-efficiency features significant spatial agglomeration globally and locally. High-High agglomeration mainly occurred in the eastern and southern coastal areas, and Low-Low agglomeration, in the northwest and middle reaches of the Yellow River. The change in spatial patterns mainly occurred in areas with High-Low and Low-High agglomeration, and the most remarkable change took place in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. (3) There exists a significant spatial effect of energy eco-efficiency among provinces of China. For the energy eco-efficiency of a certain region, the spatial spillovers from adjacent regions outweigh the influence of the error impact from adjacent regions. Industrial structure hasgreat influence on the energy eco-efficiency.
Developing methods for measuring multi-dimensional poverty and improving the accuracy of poverty identification have been the hot topics in international poverty research for decades. In light of the academic thoughts of the vulnerability and sustainable livelihood analysis framework, this paper establishes an index system and a method for geographical identification of multi-dimensional poverty, and carries out a county-level identification in rural China. Furthermore, this study makes a comparison between the identification result, income poverty and the latest designated poor regions by the Chinese government. At last, the identified multi-dimensional poor counties are classified by the similarity of poverty reduction measures. The results show that: (1) Taking the vulnerability and sustainable livelihood analysis framework proposed by DFID as theoretical basis, we build an index system of multi-dimensional poverty identification to reflect the farmers' livelihoods that multiple factors work on. It is feasible to develop a composite Multi-dimensional Development Index (MDI) for the integrated method of geographical identification of multi-dimensional poverty in rural China. (2) A total of 655 counties are identified as multi-dimensional poor counties. They are concentrated and jointly distributed in space, in which the Tibetan Plateau and its neighboring areas of three prefectures in southern Xinjiang, western Loess Plateau, mountainous and gully areas in western Yunnan and Sichuan, are suffering greatly from poverty. Besides, poor counties are mainly in Wumeng-Daliang mountainous areas, Yunnan-Guizhou-Guangxi rocky desertification areas, border mountainous areas in Yunnan, Wuling mountainous areas, Qinling-Daba mountainous areas, Shanxi-Shaanxi gully areas and Yanshan-Taihang mountainous areas. (3) In comparison to the latest designated poor counties, this paper targets at poor counties with more disadvantages at both single and multiple dimensions. Some 71.79% of designated poor counties overlap with identified poor counties. By contrast, the majority of the designated poor counties located in mountainous areas of central or eastern China do not belong to identified poor counties because of much less disadvantage/deprivation dimensions. However, the identified poor counties, which are mainly distributed in marginal areas of plateau or mountainous areas in western China, and suffering from multiple dimensions of disadvantages and deprivations, are not included in the designated poor counties. (4) According to the disadvantage/deprivation situation of different dimensions, multi-dimensional poor counties are classified into eight types, i.e., lack of financial capital, lack of human capital, lack of infrastructure, lack of both financial capital and infrastructure, lack of both human capital and infrastructure, lack of means/strategies of livelihoods, lack of living condition, and lack of development condition.
In the rapid process of industrialization and urbanization, non-agriculturalization has become one important tendency of Chinese rural evolution, which at the same time indicates obvious spatial heterogeneity. The participatory rural appraisal is employed, which involves 16 typical villages of Yishui County in Shandong Province, to explore the rural non-agricultural differences and its driving factors. In terms of regional differentiation, the livelihood activities of rural households were divided into four types: non-agricultural employment outside the county, non-agricultural employment inside the county, part-time non-agricultural employment inside the county and agricultural production. Then, we quantified the non-agricultural level by estimating the proportion of rural non-agricultural labor, non-agricultural income and non-agricultural time in 2013. On the basis of this estimation, we discussed the spatial differences and driving forces of rural non-agriculturalization in the study area. The results showed that, (1) Non-agricultural level of the villages was between 37.54% and 90.65%, which indicated that non-agriculturalization was a common phenomenon in traditional agricultural regions. Suburban independent non-agricultural villages developed their own industries, while rural households of other villages were employed in non-agricultural industries outside their villages. It is indicated that the study area was underdeveloped in non-agricultural economy. (2) Suburban villages hold the highest non-agricultural level. Food crops dominated villages showed higher level of non-agriculturalization in the regions near town, while economic crops dominated villages showed lower level of non-agriculturalization. In the same geomorphologic region, food crops dominated villages showed higher level of non-agriculturization than economic crops dominated villages. Spatial differentiation of rural non-agriculturalization was remarkable in traditional agricultural regions at the county scale. (3) As the distances to town became shorter, there was a decline in the proportion of non-agricultural employment outside the county (labor, income, and time), and that inside the county was on the rise, and the proportion of part-time non-agricultural employment inside the county showed an inverted "U"-shaped pattern. (4) The driving mechanism showed that economic diffusing efficiency and the regional accessibility were both deeply influencing employment structure of rural labors, which kept the suburban villages at the highest non-agricultural level. Agricultural income and the demand for labor made non-agricultural level of food crops dominated villages higher than that of economic crops dominated villages. As the distances to town became shorter, owing to economic diffusing efficiency and agricultural income increase, food crops dominated villages showed higher level of non-agriculturalization while economic crops dominated villages showed lower level. Non-agricultural differentiation is an important development trend of traditional agricultural regions in East China. Therefore, the authors suggest that the governments should take concrete measures on rural development management that keep consistent with non-agricultural characteristics and its driving mechanism of different villages.
