Metropolitan areas are pivotal in driving national economic growth, advancing harmonious regional development, and participating in competitive international collaboration. Consistent with international consensus, China's planning policies define metropolitan areas as a one-hour commuting circle. Simultaneously, these planning protocols particularly highlight the importance of industrial specialization and intercity collaboration, with the objective of developing modern urban agglomerations characterized by a well-defined spatial structure, complementary urban functions, and an integrated industrial division. This study uses the 2017 intercity input-output table analysis to examine patterns of industrial division and functional synergy in Chinese metropolitan areas. The findings are as follows: (1) From the perspective of industrial division and functional synergy, Chinese metropolitan areas can be categorized into four distinct spatial structures: the single-center dispersed structure, the core-periphery structure, the peripheral expansion structure, and the multi-center network structure representing an advanced phase in the spatial evolution of metropolitan areas. (2) The spatial network of industrial chains in Chinese metropolitan areas is predominantly governed by the flow of processing and manufacturing links. There is a substantial gap in the processing and manufacturing links between the Beijing and Tianjin metropolitan areas compared to similar types of metropolitan areas, and there is considerable potential for enhancing the productive service links in the Guangzhou, Chengdu, and Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan metropolitan areas. (3) The essence of transforming Chinese metropolitan areas into functionally complementary industrial cooperation areas is to further refine the spatial network of the industrial chains, strengthen functional synergy between cities, and encourage spatial integration in the metropolitan areas. (4) Single-center dispersed structure metropolitan areas, including Shijiazhuang, Chengdu, Wuhan, and Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan should initially transition toward a core-periphery structure. In contrast, peripheral expansion structure metropolitan areas such as Nanjing and Hangzhou metropolitan areas, and core-periphery structure urban agglomerations such as Tianjin, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Beijing metropolitan areas should progress toward a multi-center network structure.

The relocation of urban administrative centers plays a crucial role in optimizing urban spatial structure and advancing the modernization of the national governance system and capabilities. A thorough analysis of the spatiotemporal patterns, driving mechanisms, and development trends of administrative center relocations in China is not only a practical necessity for supporting the modernization of national governance but also a foundational requirement for the standardization and scientific advancement of administrative center relocations. This study utilizes spatial analysis methods to comprehensively examine the relocation of administrative centers in cities at or above the prefecture level in China from 1978 to 2022. The results show that there have been 81 instances of administrative center relocations across the country since the implementation of the reform and opening-up policy in the late 1970s. These relocations peaked between 2003 and 2007 and showed significant regional disparities. These relocations are predominantly short-distance and mainly aimed at promoting the development of new urban districts, often resulting in a separation from the geographical center. The relocation of urban administrative centers is a complex process influenced by an interplay of multiple factors, including national policies, governmental guidance, power distribution, resource reallocation, and planning adjustments. The regulatory role of national policies and the guidance provided by city governments are critical components in this multidimensional negotiation. In the context of the current strict national regulation of administrative division adjustment, the relocation of urban administrative centers will continue to reinforce traditional driving factors while aligning with socio-economic and technological shifts, presenting new directions driven by ecological governance, transportation development, and the evolution of innovative industries. In the future, it is essential to carefully evaluate the necessity of relocation while maintaining the fundamental stability of administrative centers. Implementing top-level design for administrative center relocations, adhering to standardized approval processes, and rigorously evaluating the rationale are key to promoting all-encompassing urban advancement. This study provides a reference for scientifically understanding the patterns and intrinsic mechanisms of urban administrative center relocation.

Through the lens of industrial transfer, this study leverages data spanning from 2004 to 2020 to empirically investigate the spatial interrelationships of the division of labor among prefecture-level cities in China. The research constructs a spatial Origin-Destination (OD) model to scrutinize the determinants influencing the urban division of labor. The findings elucidate several key points: (1) A substantial network autocorrelation attribute is prevalent in the urban industrial division of labor. In comparison to the destination network autocorrelation, the source network autocorrelation exerts a more potent influence on the division of labor, whereas the source-destination network autocorrelation imparts a detrimental effect on the division of labor. (2) The intensity of network autocorrelation in urban industrial division of labor is intertwined with the geographical locations of the industrial transfer "city pairs" and the disparity in economic development levels, exhibiting industrial idiosyncrasies and temporal phases. The network autocorrelation of industrial division of labor is more conspicuous within and among cities in the eastern and central regions, as well as between cities with substantial disparities in economic development. The network autocorrelation of spatially mobile industries and the urban industrial division of labor prior to 2012 is also more discernible. (3) The urban industrial division of labor is propelled by a myriad of factors, encompassing spatial distance, the digital economy development levels of both the source and destination cities, the extent of openness to the global market, human capital reserves, environmental regulations, energy consumption structure, financial constraints, and innovation capacities. These factors influence the division of labor and manifest spillover effects. Consequently, in discerning the paradigms of urban industrial labor division and facilitating the metamorphosis and enhancement of urban industries, it is imperative to consider the asymmetrical ramifications engendered by industrial transfer and its concomitant network interdependencies.

Against the backdrop of new development, the domestic circulation plays a critical role in boosting social and economic development. Based on inter-provincial rail freight data,this paper explores the evolution characteristics of the inter-provincial rail freight network structure on three fronts: node characteristics, spatial association and proximity. The results show that: (1) Network node centrality obeys a power-law distribution with obvious clustering characteristics. There are obvious spatial differences in outdegree and indegree, showing the pattern of sending goods from the central and western regions to the eastern region. The areas with both high indegree and outdegree are located in North and Northeast China. Low outdegree and indegree provinces are concentrated to the southwest of the Fujian-Xinjiang Axis Belt, while high outdegree and low indegree provinces are mainly in Inner Mongolia, Shanxi and Shaanxi. Low outdegree and high indegree provinces present a pattern of scattered distribution. (2) The spatial association has obvious clustering and spatial directionality, with a significant 'Matthew effect'. East-Central-West geographical heterogeneity and gradient nudging characteristics are significant, and path dependence and path locking coexist. The organization models of inter-provincial freight network are characterized by core-periphery and pole-axis.However, the spatial structure feature is not obvious and it does not present a rhombic distribution. (3) The roles of sectors are reasonable and stable, with good reciprocity in inter-provincial freight trade. The bidirectional spillover sector is concentrated in Northeast and North China, net beneficiary sector is mainly in Southwest China, broke sector has shifted from the Yangtze River Delta to the Fujian-Xinjiang Axis Belt, and there are few net spillover sector provinces scattered. Regional proximity, geographic distance, social distance and cultural distance have significant effects on inter-provincial trade, but economic distance does not have. (4) The impact of social and cultural distance on inter-provincial freight transportation is decreasing, while the degree of impact of spatial proximity and industrial distance is increasing.

Urbanization has always been a crucial area for development geography. Regional development strategies that align with urban characteristics and the scientific allocation of construction land indicators can effectively guide the high-quality coordinated development of urban agglomerations. However, the issue of whether urbanization matches the development strategy has always lacked an in-depth response in geography. Moreover, as the control over agricultural and ecological spaces becomes increasingly strict, the availability of construction land indicators is increasingly constrained. The allocation of construction land indicators is thus critical for the distribution of regional resources and the achievement of development goals of regional urban agglomeration. Based on the construction principles of development geography indicator system and the core-periphery theory, this study comprehensively considered the three subsystems of urbanization (population, economy, and land) and the spatial link intensity among cities to analyze the impacts of "siphon" and "radiation" effects on regional development, and assessed whether China's two major regional development strategies matched the comprehensive development characteristics of urban agglomerations. Based on this analysis, the quantitative allocation of construction land in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) and Yangtze River Delta (YRD) urban agglomerations was completed. The results showed that the comprehensive level index of urban (CLU) in core cities (Beijing and Tianjin) and peripheral cities differed significantly, demonstrating a clear core-periphery structure. Along with urbanization, the "siphon" effect in BTH was gradually weakening. Beijing's urban primacy decreased and the growth rate of the CLU dropped from 53.89% to 18.37% over the first and last 5 years of this study period. In contrast, the "radiation" effect in the YRD remained more obvious, exhibiting a development pattern driven by multiple growth poles in various smaller regions. As urbanization progressed, the BTH indicated a trend of coordinated development, while the integration level of the YRD continued to strengthen. Compared to the government's top-down indicator allocation data, the results of the quantitative allocation of construction land reduced volatility and increased robustness. This study confirmed the scientific basis of the coordinated development of the BTH and the integrated regional development strategy of the YRD from the perspective of development geography. It also provides empirical support for research on the allocation of construction land.

As China progresses in its high-quality development and new urbanization, the spatial development pattern of large cities is evolving from expansion of scale to optimization of existing stock. The polycentric system is widely utilized in guiding the macro-structure of spatial planning, playing a critical role in transforming urban development strategies, increasing urban efficiency, alleviating "urban diseases" and promoting urban renewal. This study establishes a framework for analyzing spatial performance in urban polycentric systems. With Hangzhou as the focal example, the evaluation proceeds across four dimensions of spatial performance, examining the city's internal spatial organization and the mechanisms of its formation. The results indicate that: (1) The polarization effect of the main center outweighs its diffusion, leading to a development pattern characterized by "strong primary and secondary centers, weak tertiary centers; concentration in the old cities, dispersion in the outskirts, differentiation of tertiary centers", with distinct disparities in the effectiveness of planning guidance; (2) Centers in the urban core and principal development directions generally exhibit high performance, with spatial forms moving towards "integration" or "central dissolution"; (3) Activity density performance maintains a balanced state at lower levels, with centers in tertiary areas and primary development trajectories achieving greater equilibrium; (4) Industrial upgrading and the construction of significant facilities drive the functional differentiation of the polycentricity, displaying patterns of horizontal and vertical divisions among center functions; (5) Travel efficiency performance aligns with the polycentric configuration, incrementally revealing the balanced nature of employment distribution across centers; (6) The evolution of the center system is shaped by a confluence of historical path dependence, natural geographic characteristics, economic and industrial development, advances in social demand, and government policy directives, especially those driven by government administrative efforts including development strategies, spatial planning, resource distribution policies, and major events, all of which have a pronounced guidance effect. Future initiatives should concentrate on the cooperative division of functions within the polycentric system, adapting spaces to meet the specific needs of different industries related to spatial and transaction costs, thereby forming both comprehensive and specialized centers. Utilizing major events and infrastructure-driven mechanisms should elevate the energy levels of centers. Moreover, the needs of micro-entities should be addressed by capitalizing on the economic effects of aggregation and market mechanisms to facilitate the orderly emergence and growth of autonomously formed centers. Strategic allocation of crucial resources through government administrative capabilities and policy instruments is essential to boost the development potential of peripheral secondary and tertiary centers.

During the Republic of China (1912-1949), Zhongshan Roads rapidly emerged in major cities and towns across the country, and hundreds of them remain today, primarily in affluent areas. To investigate this uncommon road-naming phenomenon, a comprehensive study was conducted on their construction process and spatio-temporal characteristics (within the scope of county-level and above administrative regions), using toponymy, historical geography, and GIS. Historical documents and maps were re-examined, combined with data from the China National Geographical Name Information Database, OpenStreetMap, and Historical GIS techniques such as spatial measurement, spatial analysis, and visualization. The results showed that: (1) Zhongshan Roads were initially named to commemorate Dr. Sun Yat-sen. During the Republic of China era, 599 Zhongshan Roads were established, primarily in Taiwan, Henan, Shaanxi, and along the southeast coast. (2) Today, there are 653 Zhongshan Roads, except in Xizang, Hong Kong, and Macao. (3) Among these, the Zhongshan Highway in Taiwan is the longest, while Zhongshan Street in Emei township, Hsinchu county, is the shortest. Tainan has the largest number of Zhongshan Roads overall, whereas Shanghai's Huangpu district has the highest concentration and density of these roads across China. (4) Spatial analysis revealed that historically, Zhongshan Roads were mostly found in the centers of old cities and towns. However, since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, new Zhongshan Roads have gradually moved away from city centers. (5) Over the past century, there have been four significant periods of road-naming popularity: following Dr. Sun Yat-sen's passing, commemorating the Victory of the Anti-Japanese War and the recovery of lost territories, restoring place names altered during the 1966-1976 period in the 1980s, and naming new roads at the start of the 21st century. Zhongshan Road, with its century-old tradition, symbolizes the collective remembrance of Dr. Sun Yat-sen and his enduring legacy among the Chinese people. It also reflects China's pursuit of modernization and national rejuvenation in modern times. The data analysis in this paper may require partial refinement as more historical materials are unearthed and quantitative methods are updated, but it does not affect the overall conclusions.

Globalization has resulted in a notable rise in highly-skilled talent flows from emerging to developed countries. Highly-skilled talents introduce external information, skills, and tacit knowledge, and provide impetus for technological path-breaking processes. Although the impacts of highly-skilled immigrants on economic growth, exports, and the social welfare of receiving countries have been widely studied, little research has been done to date on the influences on sending countries. This paper contributes to the limited existing literature by analysing the relationship between the migration of inventors and technological evolution in sending countries based on the OECD REGPAT database. This relates to the hypothesis that the mobility of talents from emerging to developed countries can bring back external knowledge and technologies, hence facilitating sending countries' technological path-breaking process. The findings of this paper include: (1) The technological development of emerging countries is a path-dependent process, as countries often branch into new technologies that are related to their preexisting knowledge base. As a result of knowledge feedback from highly-skilled talents, the probability of sending countries to develop unrelated technologies increases. (2) The mobility of talents across countries contributes to more international collaborations and citations for patents that are unrelated to the local knowledge base, thus enriching the technological paths of sending countries. (3) The mobility of highly-skilled talents typically affects complex technologies, which have strong economic effects that provide an impetus for other countries to imitate. And the effect on novel technologies is not significant, due to their high geographical sticky characteristics. In general, this paper highlights the importance of highly-skilled talent outflows on the technological evolution of emerging countries, then offers some policy implications for migration and innovation. Besides, there are issues about the regional consequences of talent mobility for future research to explore.

Leveraging economic census data and enterprise Point of Interest (POI) data, this study conducts an in-depth examination of co-agglomeration in Shenzhen, southern China. First, we examine the characteristics of co-agglomeration between Shenzhen's high-tech manufacturing and high-tech service industries from both economic and spatial linkage dimensions. Second, a spatio-temporal analysis is conducted using the geographical detector to examine the spatial follow-up phenomenon, providing a detailed understanding of the processes and key factors underpinning the formation of co-agglomeration patterns. The findings are as follows: (1) From the perspective of economic linkage, Shenzhen's pharmaceutical manufacturing industry and high-tech service industry show a co-agglomeration relationship; (2) From the perspective of spatial linkage, pharmaceutical manufacturing enterprises and high-tech service enterprises have formed a "multi-polar + multi-center" pattern, with all three case study areas surrounding leading pharmaceutical manufacturing enterprises showing an enhanced trend of co-agglomeration with high-tech service industries; (3) From the perspective of the formation process, there is a spatial follow-up phenomenon of high-tech service industries to pharmaceutical manufacturing industries, meaning that the following behavior in enterprise layout promotes the co-agglomeration of high-tech industries. Specifically, the information service industry mainly follows the clustering of chemical drug and active pharmaceutical ingredient manufacturing, while the scientific research service industry mainly follows the clustering of medical materials and pharmaceutical product manufacturing. The spatial follow-up process provides a perspective for analyzing the spatial process of co-agglomeration formation, and the detailed spatial follow-up relationship among industries offers useful insights for policy guidance to accelerate the cultivation of high-quality industrial parks.

Amid the increasing global uncertainties, studying the risk structure and resilience level of global supply chains for agricultural products highlights their importance. It not only provides China with a scientific foundation for better utilizing international markets and resources and ensuring the safety of agricultural product imports, but also promotes the development of risk resilience management theories and methods for typical products across geographical spaces, thus expanding research in resource geography. This study builds a framework that consists of three sectors (export sectors, logistics and transportation sectors, and import sectors) and four stages (supply, procurement, transportation, and demand). Using two-stage DEA and CoDEA models, it evaluates the supply chain risks and resilience of soybeans, which is the typical import-dependent agricultural product in China. The findings indicate that: (1) The risk of China's imported soybean supply chain increased from 2000 to 2020, with risks predominantly from the demand and procurement stages. By contrast, the supply and transport stages are less risky but significantly increased. Trade relations with exporting countries and economic policy uncertainty are the main long-term risk factors that threaten the security of soybean import supply chains. (2) China's soybean supply chain from Brazil is more resilient than that from the US and Argentina, suggesting great potential for improving supply chain cooperation with Brazil. (3) Making the distinction between short- and long-term threats is necessary for managing the risk resilience of the global soybean supply chain. Improving the capacity to react to sudden hazards represented by trade restrictions, maritime obstructions, and trade sanctions should be the priority in the short term. Long-term exploration of system construction and strategic layout optimization is necessary to improve the discursive power of the supply chain.

Energy is pivotal for the operation of the global economy. It is thus critical for us to elucidate the characteristics and dynamics of the global energy industry during the process of transformation in the 21st century. Using the input-output data by the United Nations from 1990 to 2022, this study gauges the added value of the energy industry of 184 countries and regions in the world and seeks to show its distribution, asymmetric dependency, and key drivers across different industrial stages. (1) We find the value of the global energy industry grew slowly at first, then rapidly, followed by slowly again, and ended up a recession during the period covered in our analysis. This temporal trend corresponds to the cycle of the global economy for each decade. (2) Energy small countries exhibited growing dependence on energy superpowers, and likewise interdependence among energy superpowers also increased, especially in the stage of prospecting and exploitation. This signifies that our world has gradually become an interconnected community of economic coexistence and co-prosperity. (3)We saw the rise of China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other countries as they gradually became the chain leader and hubs of the global energy industrial network. Their rise also has made the boundaries of cooperatives blur and the hierarchy of power iterate. The post Cold-War world is evolving from a unipolar one dominated by the United States into a multipolar one, and the global energy order is experiencing a profound reorganization. (4) Interdependence on the energy industry is a result of differences in attributes among countries (regions), their relative advantages, and their multidimensional proximity. Trade gaps, disparities among coporates, shared languages, colonial histories, and global organizations strengthened their interdependence, whereas geographic distance acted as a significant negative factor. Both economic gaps and institutional environments did not make any significant differences in shaping energy dependence. The role of these factors vary across different industrial stages over time.