城市经济影响能力取决于城市投资集聚能力、市场集聚规模和技术、经济的水平状况。对15个经济变量所作的主因子分析表明:我国城市经济活动的差异主要受城市经济活动规模的制约。技术、经济水平差异有一定的影响,但影响不大。目前我国已形成5级区域经济影响中心,七个一级城市经济影响区域。

The influence region of urban economy is defined as the largest range of the region where the development of regional economy is promoted and spurred by affecting capability of urban economic activity. It is mainly restricted by 3 factors: 1) the affecting capacity of urban economic activity relying on investing capability of cities, agglomeration scale of market and technical and economic conditions; 2) the factor of distance attenuating the influence ability: 3) the diversity of influence capacity among cities and their interactions.In the aspects of investment, market and technico-economic level, a principal component analysis on 15 economic variables shows that the diversity of urban economic activity in China is mainly restricted by the scale of urban economic activity.The main results of the calculation are:1) The regional economic influence centers of the whole country fall into 5 levels. Among then, the first-level centers include 6 cities, which are analosous to the nationwide centers of large regions; the second-level centers include 25 cities, analogous to the sub-centers of large regions or provincial centers with higher level of economic development; the thirdlevel centers include 63 cities, analogous to the ordinary provincial centers or the centers within the provinces with higher economic level; the fourth-level centers include 96 cities, which are ordinary provincial or regional centers, major local cities and the cities with rather specialized functions; and the fifth-level centers include 42 cities, analogous to the ordinary local centers and cities with special functions.2) In the author’s region, seven first-level influence regions of urban economy have been formed in China.