The "T" structures in China's territorial development and economic layout remain to be the two areas with the greatest potential for economic growth in China. This paper, by preliminarily expounding the strategic position of the Yangtze River Economic Belt and the significance of implementing General Secretary Xi Jinping's instruction of "promoting well-coordinated environmental conservation and avoiding excessive development", pointed out that this economic belt failed to recognize the importance of conservation despite of its rapid economic growth during the past two decades. The author believed that the key to conscientiously implementing President Xi's instruction of "promoting well-coordinated environmental conservation and avoiding excessive development" lies in the word "well-coordinated", which highlights the importance of joint efforts. Several main areas in which all regions and sectors should take long-term concrete coordinated actions were then put forward.
The core objective of rural vitalization is to systemically establish a coupling pattern of various rural development elements including population, land and industry. As one of the prerequisites, land resources is required to be optimally allocated via land consolidation. Consequently, land consolidation contributes greatly in population agglomeration, industry development and resources support under the context of combating rural decline. In light of these facts, this paper conducts an elementary analysis on the connotation of land consolidation and rural vitalization in the new era, as well as their relationships. Furthermore, the issues on the alternative paths for achieving rural vitalization via land consolidation in different regions were also discussed. Main conclusions are drawn as follows: (1) It is manifested that rural vitalization in the new era can be explained as a comprehensive process of tackling the loss and decline of rural development elements through political, economic and cultural means. Most importantly, vitalizing the interior motivation and absorbing the external power are essential for the efficient reconfiguration and utilization of rural population, land and industry, thus achieving the goals of arousing rural vitality, optimizing elements structure, enhancing territorial function and restructuring rural morphology. (2) From the perspective of rural vitalization, land consolidation, which adheres to the path of connotative development, should not only target at stimulating the key elements of rural development, but also place emphasis on the coordination of material space and spirit core, so as to realize the co-prosperity of the urban and the rural areas. (3) Regional natural indigenous factors and the corresponding phases of socio-economic development should be both taken into account in the process of implementing rural land consolidation. Following the principle of adjusting measures to local conditions, appropriate paths or modes are supposed to be chosen in different regions constrained by the territorial development pattern. Finally, focusing on a series of problems and new concepts, which is aimed at achieving urban-rural integration development and boosting socio-economic growth in rural areas, we propose further discussions.
Targeted poverty alleviation is a pillar of China's new and innovative anti-poverty and development strategy. China is an agricultural country with a large but poor rural population. At the village level, poverty alleviation has the potential to affect millions of citizens. The Loess Plateau is a composite of fragile ecological environment and rural poverty communities. As a backward economy often twins with fragile ecology, studying poverty from a multidimensional perspective in tandem with spatial heterogeneity and its influencing factors can provide an effective analysis of poverty in regions with characteristics similar to those of the Loess Plateau. This study features Pengyang, which is a poverty-stricken county located on the Loess Plateau, and relies on the approach by Alkire and Foster to measure multidimensional poverty, using spatial autocorrelation, Geodetector, OLSR and quantile regression (QR) analysis. Results from our investigation show that the study area has a deep level of multidimensional poverty, with a Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) score of 0.045. The rates of health, housing, and education dimensions were 0.263, 0.245, and 0.227, respectively. Moran's I of MPI was 0.2, which indicates that multidimensional poverty was positively correlated with a spatial pattern of "north, south, middle; high, high, low". Using Geodetector, the mean distance between villages and the center of town, as well as the mean elevation of the villages and mean distance to a river, were found to be the main factors of spatial heterogeneity within the MPI. The q-values of them were 0.552, 0.396, and 0.326, respectively, and the result of regression analysis conforms to the Geodetector. The interaction of the above factors enabled the creation of a multidimensional poverty spatial heterogeneity mechanism at village level for the Loess Plateau, revealing a lack in welfare of farmers, the poor of infrastructure, the congenital deficiency and stalled development of industry, and weak government functioning at the township level. Our results suggest that new strategies regarding urbanization should be investigated in order to improve and ensure the quality of public services in areas with similar characteristic as the Loess Plateau. These new strategies could enable the resolution of problems from the root, such as designing public goods and services that fill gaps in current health care and housing options, as well as the operation of transport facilities at the village level. This could help to mitigate welfare loss of farmers as well as reduce the negative impact of health, housing, education, and other dimensions of poverty.
Urbanization is an inevitable trend of modernization and the fundamental transition in socioeconomic structure, human production and life style. China is undergoing a rapid and unprecedented urbanization process, and has achieved the short-term goals that European and American countries attained in the past decades or even centuries ago. This kind of rapid expansion has inevitably led to a serious imbalance between urban land expansion and urban population growth. We used the demographic-landscape urbanization coupling relationship index (ratio of the annual average growth rate of demographic permanent population and urban development land) to explore the spatio-temporal characteristics of demographic-landscape urbanization coupling situation, and further explain its driving forces during the past decade in China. All analyses, based on the demographic statistics and landscape dataset of 636 cities in China, aimed to identify and diagnose six coupling types. Furthermore, we made the macro pattern of urbanization development level more visible with the help of Kernel Density spatial analysis tool. Results show that: (1) Over the past decade, the average annual growth rate of urban development land in China was 1.65 times that of the urban population, and demographic-landscape urbanization coupling situation was poorly coordinated. (2) We found that there is a spatial dependency between demographic urbanization and landscape urbanization. Moreover, the spatial agglomeration center of high-density urban population showed a gradual westward moving trend. Meanwhile, urbanization development mode shifted from "land lag" to "population lag". (3) Generally, the area of per capita urban development land has exceeded the standard threshold; and 41.96% of the cities currently have a development land area per capita more than five times of the ideal value. (4) The proportion of three coordination types was 73.25%, which is much higher than that of three incoordination types (26.75%). Among them, "Both Growth and Uncoordinated Type" took the largest proportion of 43.27%, which reflects the uncoordinated relationship between demographic urbanization and landscape urbanization. This situation will continue or even is intensified in the years to come. Additionally, the cities located at the edge of urban agglomeration seemed to be more uncoordinated than cities at the center. This is probably because that the cities at the edge of urban agglomeration, which had a small population and low property price, relied more on the "land finance" to earn their main source of urban economic income. (5) Economic development level, population size, governmental decision-making behaviors, geographical location and regional disparity were all driving factors of demographic-landscape urbanization. In addition, there are few obvious differences in the mechanism and effect of these factors. To sum up, urban population and land use management in the new era should get more attention according to the new trend in system diagnosis and comprehensive analysis, thus to provide a scientific basis in development decision for new urbanization and urban-rural integration strategy as well as the rural revitalization strategy.
The growth and spatial differentiation of housing price is a theoretical issue continuously discussed in the field of urban geography, and even a practical problem relating to whether urban residents could realize the goal of living a good life in their own residences. The paper chooses 3761 independent residential districts (or residential clusters) in Nanjing as research objects, and analyzes sample data of 30 quarters in 2009-2017 of each residential district; on this basis, it focuses on the spatial differentiation pattern and evolution process of residential price in Nanjing. It finds that, on the whole, the housing price in Nanjing presents the staged rule of mutually alternative of "fast growth" and "relative stability" in one and a half year; while, high-price residences are mainly in Hexi New Town and the districts of famous schools, as well as high-rise service apartments distributed in inner urban areas, gated communities with landscape at the periphery, and high-grade villas in suburbs. Based on the consideration of the price level, location characteristics and building attributes of residential districts, this paper has comprehensively divided the residences in Nanjing into nine typical types, those are in inner city: (a) the multi-story traditional residences, (b) high-rise apartment residences, and (c) residences within the districts of famous schools; in the peripheral areas: (d) the urban new center residences, (e) landscape-area residences, (f) other gated residences; in the suburbs: g) the residences in core areas of new towns, (h) high-grade villa residences, and i) residences in urban fringe area. The comparison of the price growth process of different residences shows that, a close connection exists between the spatial attribute of residences (centrality, comfort, and scarcity) and the characteristics of housing price growth (rapidity, stability, sustainability). This paper summarizes four models of housing price growth of residences in Nanjing, namely, leading pattern, following pattern, growth-chasing pattern, and independent pattern. In addition, it analyzes the main internal and external driving forces for the differentiation of housing price growth of different types of residences. On this basis, it discusses the deep effects of the rapid and differentiated growth of housing price on the urban social space reconstruction in Nanjing, including enlarging the gap between the rich and the poor, crowding out the middle- and low-income population, solidifying the residential spatial differentiation, etc. The study on the growth of residential housing price and its aftereffects with Nanjing as an example, which is a typical big city in China, would have a certain reference for relevant research on the general fast growth and spatial differentiation of housing prices in China after the global financial crisis in 2008.
A metropolitan area, which plays a dominant role in the regional economic development, is defined as a composite of a densely populated urban core and its surrounding interlocking territories. It is essentially a unified labor market that is delimited by the commute flows between a principal city and the peripheral area in most of foreign countries. However, due to the absence of commuting census data in China, it is either too difficult to conduct delimitations based on the commuting linkage or the results could be completely different from those in foreign countries. We based our delimitation on commuting flows identified from mobile phone data, which records the users' spatio-temporal information while they communicate with the network via towers. First, we inferred the user's residence and workplace using two weeks of China Mobile's 2G mobile signaling data in 2014. Then, we delimited the boundary of Shanghai metropolitan area according to the foreign standards. Additionally, we proposed to utilize the recreational activity, also inferred from the mobile phone data, as an auxiliary standard to adjust the boundary. The conclusions can be drawn as follows: (1) In terms of commuting flows, the Shanghai metropolitan area covers the surrounding area of the central city, the Songjiang new town and the large industrial zones in the urban fringe, while in terms of recreational activity, it includes the surrounding area of the central city, the new towns of Songjiang, Jiading, Qingpu, the Huinan area, and the Changxing Island. Morphologically, the Shanghai metropolitan area is slightly longer in the east-west direction and narrower in the north-south direction. (2) The commuting and recreational connections can be combined to delimit a metropolitan area in China, while the former could be the primary indicator with the latter as the auxiliary. (3) Huge difference exists between the metropolitan area of Shanghai and the foreign ones. The foreign metropolitan areas usually have more expanded ranges covering surrounding jurisdictional zones, while the Shanghai metropolitan area mainly grows within its administrative boundary and is confined to a relatively small area around the central city.
With the rapid development of knowledge economy, great changes have been taking place in urbanization pattern across the world in the current conjuncture. Considering the fact that traditional urbanization theory is hard to interpret these changes, innovation is the core concept to explain the phenomenon of the new urbanization dynamics. As one of important contents of urban geography, in the perspective of space of flows, urbanization dynamics needs to turn from research on the population flow between rural and urban research to studies on high skilled migrants flow among cities and regions. Against this background, we propose a conception of innovation-based urbanization, and use it to describe the effect of high skilled migrants and cultural diversity on urban innovation in China. Based on the sixth census data of 270 cities in China in 2010, our study calculates the index of cultural diversity of each city, and analyses the spatial structure of high skilled migrants and cultural diversity in China. Then this study measures the extent to which high skilled migrants and cultural diversity increase urban innovation, with a method of spatial regression analysis. Conceptual and empirical contributions are also compared to previous studies. The results are obtained as follows: (1) The migration of highly skilled to cities, which changes urban function and landscape and extends the knowledge activities and behaviors, is emphasized by innovation-based urbanization conception, which responds to the development of knowledge-based economy, providing a good explanation of new dynamics, new mechanism of urban development and new urban innovation landscape. (2) Innovation-based urbanization is the important driving force for Chinese urban development, especially for eastern coastal areas and provincial capital cities. (3) Highly skilled migrants and cultural diversity do have demonstrated positive effect on urban innovation output. A ten percent increase in the number of urban highly skilled migrants and the index of cultural diversity direct increase respectively urban patents by 3% and 2%. The conclusions could deepen the understanding of openness and dynamics of regional innovation system and help to improve decision-making ability on urbanization planning, promoting urban innovation and development.
As the main places for urban residents' recreation activity in the era of mass leisure, urban public recreational space (UPRS) is one of the major components of urban public spatial system. Its planning, layout, and the service are the main characters to measure the urban social civilization and the life quality of residents. Meanwhile, in order to meet the current demands for the construction of livable cities and meet the challenges of UPRS development in the process of urbanization, it is important to have a scientific and systematic review on the latest development of UPRS research for promoting the development of this subject. Based on a data from the China National Knowledge Internet during 1985 to 2017, this study examined and summarized the research development of UPRS in China. By using literature quantitative analysis, we divided the China's UPRS related research into three stages of development based on the number and growth rate of papers per year, namely starting period (1985-2000), growth period (2001-2009), and consolidation period (2010-2017). Then, this paper identified nine hot research topics in the UPRS and reviewed their progresses in research by using a knowledge network of UPRS built on the co-occurrence of keywords. These topics include the classifications of UPRS, spatial structure and layout, comprehensive assessment, planning and development strategies, impacts induced by UPRS development, evolution characteristics and their driving mechanism, space imagery features, sustainable utilization, and so on. Moreover, this paper systematically reviewed the research methods and the scale of the China's UPRS related studies. Finally, in response to problems and deficiencies of extant research, this paper put forward some suggestions regarding future research. Chinese UPRS studies should pay more attention to the basic theoretical research. We should construct a new research system with Chinese characteristics based on interdisciplinary and multi-level spatial integration research. Besides, we should develop the humanism philosophy and construct management systems for UPRS that can lead the development of world cities based on the global vision.
Over the last decades, Chinese enterprises have emerged as the most active builders and investors in worldwide hydropower development. These international economic activities result from China's progressive reforms in both economic and political arenas. Chinese construction of overseas hydropower stations includes foreign aid, foreign trade and foreign investments. This article analyzes the spatial-temporal evolution pattern and mechanism of Chinese-constructed hydropower stations abroad, and reveals the major influencing factors since the year 2000. The major research findings are presented as follows. Firstly, at the global scale, the numbers, ways of construction, and spatial patterns of Chinese-constructed hydropower stations are varied at different stages. Secondly, the state has played a leading role in the construction of Chinese overseas hydropower stations in carrying out its strategy in the past four stages: (a) China directly designated the departments to aiding between 1955 and 1981. (b) The state controlled foreign-aid capital outflows, and encouraged state-owned enterprises to sign contracts with foreign companies, while the projects were supported financially by Western banks from 1982 to 2000. (c) The state has decentralized its power to transgovernmental policy networks and stimulated state-owned enterprises to compete in investment and contracting projects, while the enterprises sought financial support from Chinese banks, such as the Export-Import Bank of China between 2001 and 2009. (d) Based on national initiatives such as the Belt and Road, the state designed a Chinese solution to pursue common prosperity and development and integrated state-owned enterprises to adopt the strategy of associated competition, while the projects began to be supported financially by multilateral institutions promoted by China after 2010. And thirdly, the impact factors on the Chinese-constructed overseas hydropower stations since 2000 are the relations of political and economic diplomacy between China and the host countries, the proportion of the population below the poverty line, the condition of electricity supply, the amount of received aid, the level of industrial growth and market base of the host country.
Pollution-intensive industries can promote regional economic growth. They also pose a great threat to regional environmental system. Polluting industries may be protected by regional policies due to their contribution to economic growth, but the local governments may also impose some restrictions and controls on them by means of the environmental regulations. From 1980 to 2014, the development period of pollution-intensive industries in China can be divided into three stages: slow growth, rapid expansion, and structural transition. The spatial distribution of pollution industries changed from dispersal to concentration and then to decentralization. The central provinces such as Henan, Hubei, Hunan and Jiangxi have become the major areas of pollution-intensive industries transfer. By establishing the regional attribute model and the regional-industrial interaction model, this paper quantitatively analyzes the influence of environmental regulation and local protection on the spatial distribution of the pollution-intensive industries in China during 2001-2014, and tests whether there exist the pollution haven hypothesis and the Porter hypothesis. Environmental regulation and local protection are important factors that influence the spatial distribution of polluting industries, but there exists obvious industrial and regional heterogeneity. Industries with a high degree of pollution are more likely to be affected by environmental regulations, and industries with high share of state ownership are more likely to be protected by local governments. Environmental regulation and local protection are two opposite forces, which have the effect of mutual inhibition and weakening. The roles of environmental regulation and local protection in coastal and inland areas have significant differences. The effect of environmental regulation is more prominent in eastern China, while that of local protection in central and western China is more significant. In order to prevent the central and western regions from being the "pollution haven" and to realize the win-win between economic growth and environmental protection, a differentiated policy should be formulated according to local conditions and the development stage.
As one of the significant economic development tools, the transport investment's comprehensive economic effects considering spatiotemporal heterogeneity have attracted attention from different levels of government and private development sectors. Much of current literature, however, lacks a perspective of spatial differences and spatial linkages, and the relevant economic influential paths still need to be further examined. To fill this understanding gap, the paper attempts to understand the economic growth and spatial aggregation effects of transport investment and the potential influential paths based on a joint estimation by the spatial panel and structural equation modeling, respectively. The results of the study indicate that: (1) The significant economic growth, as well as economic impacts of spatial aggregation of transport investment are observed, but in general the effects would decrease after controlling the spatial autocorrelation issue; (2) The economic effects of the investment in transport sectors have considerable spatial and temporal differences. For areas with high level of urbanization and economic performance, the economic effect of transport investment is much higher and more significant. To some extent, transport investment in these areas exerts a more significant impact of spatial aggregation. The temporal effects show that from 1997 to 2015 the transport investment can reinforce the economic performance and the level of spatial aggregation. Also, the transport investments at the previous stage, in general, have a greater effect on economic growth, and would lead to a spatial decentralization trend of economic activities; (3) Transport investment can promote economic growth by direct and a variety of indirect pathways. The indirect pathways can affect the investments on the related industries, labor growth, and urbanization. These findings would provide some policy implications for the decision-making of transport investment in urban China.
Spatio-temporal differentiation of regional economic growth viewed from inner functional structure in a typical area is a hot research topic in economic geography in recent years. Based on the core-peripheral theory and the creative methodology framework, we identified the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) region into the first central group, the secondary central group and peripheral group, and then displayed the evolution of spatio-temporal differentiation of regional economic growth and disparities in the region from 1994 to 2014 using some indexes which can represent regional economic growth and economic level respectively supported by some statistical indictors and geostatistical analysis methods. The results indicated that there was a positive correlation between accelerating economic growth and widening economic disparities, and the inter-group differences become the main portion of the widening disparities after 2001 in the BTH region. The evolution of spatial differentiation can be divided into four stages according to the characteristics of overall regional economic growth and spatial distribution. In the first stage, economic growth dispersed from the core to peripheral areas. The differences include the intra-group differences, the inter-group differences, and the differences decreased. During the second stage, the economic growth slowed down and clustered in core areas, which resulted in an increase in economic disparities. In the third stage, the overall economic growth rate of the BTH region rose but fluctuated, and the high-speed economic growing regions were mainly distributed surrounding the core. In the last stage, the average economic growth rate declined and the high-speed economic growing regions returned to the core. In summary, the peripheral areas have not yet received the steady and robust driving force emitted from the core. After that, some factors influencing economic growth of three types of groups were estimated in a constructive multiple linear regression model. The coefficient estimates of variables indicated a significant gradient which reflected the gradient of economic structure and economic level among the three groups.
The rapid development of air transport has increased air traffic flow. Corridors-in-the-sky have become a new technology to support the full development and utilization of airspace resources due to its high-density air traffic flow. The identification of congestion period and congestion segment is the foundation of lanes distribution and the operation of activation and deactivation in corridors-in-the-sky. This paper proposes a method which can design corridors-in-the-sky, and identify air congestion and the influence of air routes traffic flow. Based on heavy traffic air routes, locations of corridors-in-the-sky are determined, and the routes-attendees are determined based on distance constrain. Particularly, fourteen corridors-in-the-sky of China are designed. Through space-time data calculation, space-time map compilation, grid frequency filtering and threshold setting, a congestion period and congestion segment are identified in this paper according to the times of overlap and the frequency of the hottest grids. The influence of heavy traffic air routes is also analyzed through the two indexes of scale value and aggregation value. We have the following findings: the congestion period of corridors-in-the-sky presents the structural characteristics of the multi-peak "wavy" scattered distributions, and the later aggregated distribution of top peaks in the whole day. The congestion segment is presented as the structural features of unbalanced coverage and centralized distribution of crossings. The highly congested corridors-in-the-sky are presented as an italic "N" font frame, which is not fully integrated with centralized small segments. In a spatial and temporal interaction, there are two types of congestion segments, single-period and multi-period overlap, and there are some common congestion periods in different congestion segments of multiple corridors-in-the-sky. The heavy traffic air routes play a decisive role in the congestion of corridors-in-the-sky, and the influence of the two directions on arrival and departure is unbalanced. The congestion identification of air traffic is helpful for the dynamical evaluation of China's airspace resource, which can provide a basis for the distribution of corridors-in-the-sky in the future of China.
In the context of globalization, geopolitical relationships should be considered under the general geo-structure. Traditional geopolitical factors such as security are still the indispensable drivers of global patterns. In this study, social network analysis was used to construct an analysis framework from the perspective of a geo-system. Using this framework, we investigated the holistic and structural characteristics of the geo-economic and geopolitical relationships in Southeast Asian geo-system, quantified the power and reliance degrees of each country in terms of geo-economics and geopolitics (security), and also explored the potential mechanisms of security reliance. The results show that: (1) Since the end of the Cold War, the United States (US) replaced Japan as the country that exerted the strongest geo-economic influence on Southeast Asian countries, and then was supplanted by China. In terms of geopolitics, the United States is the most influential country over Southeast Asia. Although China has taken the second seat since 2005, its geopolitical influence is still far behind that of the US. Overall, from a geo-economic perspective, Southeast Asian countries seem to be more dependent on China than on other countries, while geopolitically (i.e., security) they rely mostly on the US and its traditional allies, including the United Kingdom, France and Germany. There is enough evidence to support the well-known adage that "Southeast Asia relies on China in economy, but on US in security". (2) Differences in national power are the essential drivers of security reliance. The specific direction of security reliance is primarily controlled by the geographic distance between countries. In addition, differences in political geographic traits are also essential factors that shape security reliance.
Europe is one of the important regions of 'the Belt and Road Initiative', playing both a significant role as an economic corridor connecting Asia and as an endpoint. In the context of globalization, the Belt and Road Initiative as a form of regional economic integration is driven by improvements in transportation and information technologies. Regional economic integration also weakens the borders among nation-states. However, low-income developing countries are pushed to a more marginal economic position and are deprived of a political voice as regional economic integration plays out in the current world economy. These trends are also playing a role in the rapid spread of conflicts at the global scale, one manifestation of which is the refugee crisis in Europe. Consequently, it is necessary to address the impacts of the refugee crisis in Europe and eliminate potential risks in the economic corridors under the Belt and Road Initiative. Taking into account the perspective of geography and refugee settlement policies of European countries, this paper analyzed the spatial-temporal patterns and optimized the migration routes and resettlement of the refugees arriving in Europe from 2015 to 2017 by conducting gray relational analysis, a hierarchical analysis and multi-objective programming. According to the spatial and temporal evolution analysis, refugees migrating to Europe mainly landed in 2015. Meanwhile, the number of landed refugees accepted by European countries were extremely polarized and uneven. The results of the gray relational analysis showed that the decision-making of resettlement of refugees was highly related to welfare policies and income level in the country of destination. However, the changes in refugee policy in various countries had an uncertain impact on the decision-making process of refugees, which also affected the spatial pattern of resettlement of refugees. The results of the hierarchical analysis showed that the Nordic and western European countries were more attractive for refugees, while the livability of the eastern and southern European countries was relatively poor. The number of refugees accepted by most European countries did not match with their level of livability. The optimized pattern of multi-objective planning indicated the limitations of European refugee policy and the challenges of the existing migrating patterns in the context of globalization. The optimized results showed that the migration trend of refugees originally stranded in Turkey and Ukraine was to concentrate in western Europe, the migration trend of refugees originally stranded in Greece and Hungary showed a relatively equally dispersed pattern throughout Europe, and the migration trend of refugees originally stranded in Italy was dispersed in a sector-shape. The optimized migration pattern provides suggestions for policy making in relieving the deteriorating security in the region, balancing the allocation of labor and providing a potential market for investment in construction under the Belt and Road Initiative.
