Hu Huanyong, a famous geographer, discovered a divide of population geography in China in 1935 (hereinafter referred to as the Hu Line), which was an important achievement in the development of the discipline of geography in China, and was widely accredited and cited. In November, 2014, Premier Li Keqiang raised a question about the Hu Line, when he visited the exhibition of sciences of human settlements in the National Museum of China. This question is whether the Hu Line can be broken or not again caused a stir. Hereby we invited some geographers to have academic discussion on this question, aiming to demonstrate their understanding and reflection on the Hu Line from different perspectives. Thus, the scientific value and practical significance of the Hu Line are deepened, and furthermore, the Hu Line can provide reference for the implementation and regional planning of the new-type urbanization in China.
The Hu Huanyong Line, which is also called the Aihui-Tengchong Line, is drawn by Hu Huanyong and marks a striking difference in the distribution of China's population. It has been accepted and used for the last 81 years, and has had a considerable influence on Chinese population distribution research at home and abroad. With rapid new urbanization, research on the Hu Huanyong Line has increased sharply. In the context of new urbanization, an urgent question for us is how to understand the Hu Huanyong Line accurately. As a divide between the distribution patterns of the population in China, the Hu Huanyong Line has not changed substantially in the past 81 years. It represents a divide not only for the ecological environment, but also for climate. There are mainly prohibited development areas and restricted development areas in the Major Function Oriented Zones Planning west of the Hu Huanyong Line. It is not only the region east of the Hu Huanyong Line, but also includes some parts of the central and western regions of China. The formation of the line was the result of long-term interactions between the natural environment, economic development and social and historical conditions. Therefore, it would not be changed by what we think and do to break through. New urbanization emphasizes that the rural population migrates to the towns and cities nearby, rather than a large-scale transfer of population. Due to a local transfer of 100 million people in the central and western regions, new urbanization will accelerate the process of the population gathering in these regions. New urbanization has a significant impact on the population structure of different sizes of cities and towns, but little effect on the national spatial pattern. It is healthy urbanization in harmony with nature, therefore, rational thinking is required during the process of new urbanization, in order to optimize the spatial distribution pattern of urbanization. Pushed by the two-child policy issued recently, the population in the eastern and central China is predicted to increase with the western region increasing slowly due to the unbalanced population birth policy. With the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative, urbanization in the western region will accelerate, opening up and expanding border cities, thus posing new challenges to the population distributed either side of the Hu Huanyong Line.
In the context of global climate change and economic integration, the catastrophes, which are caused by typhoon occur frequently and bring a great loss to the whole world in the aspect of population, economy and others. As a result, the typhoon catastrophes pose a great threat to regional security. Some secondary disasters such as storm surges, floods, landslides and debris flows, which are triggered by typhoon, constitute disaster chains with an accumulative and amplified effect on disaster losses. According to disaster system theory, this paper proposes a classification system of global typhoon disaster chains with cases data from 2000 to 2010 that is collected from internet and media report, based on the characteristics of hazard-formative environment that typhoons pass over. Then it makes the classified statistics of disaster chains on type and intensity, and obtains regional features of six ocean areas in the world by classifying and analyzing case data. Result of regional features on type and intensity show that: in the Northwest Pacific Ocean region, typhoon disaster chains mainly occur in mountainous (or hilly) areas, the total proportion of disaster chains type can be 34.4%, and the intensity of disaster chains can be 3.1. In the South Pacific Ocean region, typhoon disaster chains mainly occur in the insular area, the total proportion of disaster chains type can be 59.2%, and the intensity of disaster chains can be 2.6 to 3.0. In the North India Ocean region, typhoon disaster chains mainly occur in the estuarine coastal area, the total proportion of disaster chains type can be 35.8%, and the intensity of disaster chains can be 0.7 to 0.9. In South India Ocean region, typhoon disaster chains mainly occur in the plain area, the total proportion of disaster chains type can be 31%, and the intensity of disaster chains can be 2.6. In the North Atlantic Ocean region and Northeast Pacific Ocean region, typhoon disaster chains occur mainly in the plain coastal area. In addition, the total proportion of North Atlantic Ocean can be 24.7%, and the intensity of disaster chains can be 2.0 to 2.3, the total proportion of Northeast Pacific Ocean can be 31.2%, and the intensity of disaster chains can be 2.3. This research can provide a theoretical basis for automatic recognition, dynamic simulation and forecast of typhoon disaster chains in the world to support infrastructure construction of regional disaster prevention, and help to make regional strategies of disaster mitigation and emergency responses or rescue.
Quantitative description of the relation between ecosystem service and human socio-economic development is one of the most critical contents in the fields of ecology, geography and economics. In this paper, based on ecosystem service theory, the concept, the characterization and evaluation methods of ecological well-being were defined. Referencing to resource curse theory, the hypothesis of ecological benediction, absolute ecological curse and conditional ecological curse were proposed from the viewpoint of generalized ecological well-being. On this basis, an empirical analysis of ecological benediction effect and ecological curse effect of all provinces in the mainland of China during 2001 and 2013 was conducted by using related data from national and regional levels. The results showed that from the per capita ecological well-being, the hypothesis of absolute ecological curse was false on the national scale. Ecological benediction effect in the eastern and western regions was remarkable. Driven by the growth of these factors such as the proportion of foreign investment, the proportion of tertiary industry, and the proportion of regional population, the increase of per capita ecological well-being in the eastern and western regions improved the development of regional economy and society. Considering the proportion of employees in the four sectors of farming, forestry, husbandry and fishery, the hypothesis of conditional ecological curse was false on both national and regional scales. Ecological benediction effect in the eastern region was remarkable. With the increase of the proportion of employees from farming, forestry, husbandry and fishery sectors, the development speed of regional economy and society increased by 36.35%. Considering the proportion of production values of farming, forestry, husbandry and fishery, the hypothesis of conditional ecological curse was true on both national and regional scales. Under the joint influence of urbanization status and road capacity, one doubling of the proportion of production values of farming, forestry, husbandry and fishery would lead to a decrease of 45.63% in the national socio-economic development speed. Moreover, under the joint effect of per capita GDP and other factors, one doubling of the proportion of production values of the four sectors would result in a decrease of 30.64%-33.49% in the regional socio-economic development. From the viewpoint of generalized human well-being, natural ecosystem contributed greatly to the improvement of regional ecological well-being per capita, surplus labor force employment and so on. Meanwhile, it was necessary to reduce the proportion of production values of the four sectors in the national economy to promote regional socio-economic development. The regions and departments concerned should take effective measures to avoid ecological curse effect by proper ecological conservation activities, and enhance ecological benediction effect with regional socio-economic development planning in the proper temporal scale.
Using GAEZ (Global Agro-Ecological Zones) model, the agro-climatic constraints, soil, topography and other factors were used to estimate maize production potential in Northeast China during 1961-2010, and the spatial and temporal patterns of maize production potential caused by climate change in this region in the past 50 years were analyzed. Results are shown as follows: (1) The average maize production potential had a larger fluctuation in Northeast China during 1961-2010. The maize production potential increased by 80.00 kg/hm2 per decade in Northeast China in the past 50 years; (2) Frequent changes of the maize production potential took place at the turn of the 20th century due to the changes in climate; (3) Heilongjiang province saw the highest total production potential of maize, namely, the increasing range of maize production potential was the highest, followed by Jilin province, and Liaoning province was the lowest in the past 50 years; (4) The production potential of maize fluctuated dramatically in Heilongjiang in the years of 1961-2010, while Jilin and Liaoning were in a relatively stable state; (5) In the past 50 years, maize suitable planting areas slightly increased in Northeast China, which was mostly found in the northwestern Heilongjiang. Meanwhile, the area with higher production potential increased significantly and showed the trend of northward movement. This study provides a theoretical basis for efficient utilization of climate and land resources and the optimization of maize production distribution.
A balanced ecological carrying capacity is important to achieve sustainable development for human enterprise. However, few studies have predicted the ecological carrying capacity after a regional development planning such as Northern Slope Economic Belt of Tianshan Mountains (NSEBTM) which is an important node area of Silk Road Economic Belt. Here, we use the "Ecological Footprint" method to assess and predict the NSEBTM's ecological carrying capacity of years 2010 and 2015 respectively. Results show that grassland and energy-oriented land are the main components of the ecological footprints in 2010 which takes about 93% of the total. The per capita ecological carrying capacity is higher than per capita ecological footprint which shows the study area is in a good ecological carrying status and has ecological surplus. For 2015, the ecological carrying status of NSEBTM is still in a good condition and most areas of the region have ecological surplus. However, because of the fast growth of population and consuming level of local residents, the ecological carrying capacity of 2015 is lower than that of 2010. The utilization of unused land in the urbanization could provide more land. So the region can keep an ecological surplus status. The per capita ecological footprint of urban residents in 2010 and 2015 are the 1.974 and 2.3 times respectively of the rural residents. The urbanization has a certain pressure on regional sustainability. Resources and environmental carrying capacity need to be monitored and early warned.
Equality is a critical issue that regional social and economic development and policy-making has paid much attention to, which is also regarded as a core factor influencing the stable growth of grain production and sustainable development of traditional agriculture. Taking Henan province as a case area, the spatial pattern, regional differentiation and forming mechanism of social inequality at county level in traditional agriculture area are systematically researched from the perspective of social deprivation. Results show that the intensity of social inequality at county level in Henan represents a higher level as a whole. The social development level has generally shaped a sort of core-periphery semi-circular spatial structure with high value in the west and low value in the east. The regional differentiation of social inequality presents a significant feature with the highest level of social development in Zhongyuan urban agglomeration, where maximum development gap among the counties, however, exists. The social development in eastern Henan shows a low-level spatial equilibrium with the coexistence of inversion phenomenon between grain production and government receipts and grain production and people’s livelihood. The social development level in rural counties obviously lags behind that in urban areas, whereas, the gaps among rural counties is twice as much as that among urban areas. This trend is significantly different from coastal developed areas. The spatial pattern of social inequality at county level in Henan driven by the factors, such as regional economic development, social policies, spatial strategy, and path dependence, is tabbed the constitutive characteristic in the period of comprehensive socio-economic transformation in China. Consequently, three steps on how to narrow the gap of social inequality among counties are proposed. First, based on the geographical characteristics, the mode of agricultural production should be transformed, agricultural science and technology should be supported and the county economy should be forcefully developed in order to increase the income of rural residents. Second, the level of public service should be improved and the spatial distribution of facilities should be optimized in order to narrow the gap between rural and urban areas. Third, the proportion of non-agricultural population should be increased at county level and new-pattern urbanization construction in typical agricultural areas should be promoted.
Based on 2183 county-level administrative units of China from 1991 to 2011, this paper applies SFA method to estimate TFP and its decompositions under carbon constraints and their spatial-temporal changes. The main conclusions are: First, the ecological TFP grows at an annual rate of 4.47%, lower than the traditional TFP, but the gap is narrowing and the former exceeded the latter in 2011. Second, the contribution of ecological TFP to the gross growth of China's agricultural output value is 54.9%, 3.6% lower than the share of traditional TFP, while factor inputs' contribution is 45.1%. Third, FTP is the main driving factor of ecological TFP, and has narrowed the gap between ecological and traditional TFP. Fourth, places where ecological TFP are smaller than tradition TFP are mainly distributed to the east and south of the Hu Huanyong Line. Areas west of the line have low traditional FTP and ecological TFP, showing a double deterioration phenomenon. Ecological TE and TEC are less than traditional TE and TEC except for Shengsi, and ecological FTP is small than traditional FTP on the whole.
Based on the theoretical framework established by Fujita and Thisse in 2003, the paper introduces institutional environment variables into the model to study the mechanism about how regional manufacturing industries' agglomeration and institutional environment affect spatial technology spillovers through technological innovation. According to the theoretical analysis results, the manufacturing industries' agglomeration plays a positive role in promoting regional technological innovation. When the manufacturing industries are gathering within a region, the growth rate of technological innovation of manufacturing industries in this region will be increased gradually, leading to the improvement of regional technological innovation, thus the spatial technology spillovers effect will be stronger. Besides, the institutional environment in a region is better, the manufacturing industry companies' are gathering within the region, the level of technological innovation of the manufacturing industries is higher, then the spatial technology spillovers effect is stronger. On this basis, the paper uses panel instrumental variable two-stage least squares estimation method to test the mechanism with panel data of China's 30 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities from 2003 to 2012. The results are shown as follows. On the one hand, from the national overall sample, the manufacturing industries' agglomeration alone neither has a positive role in promoting regional technological innovation, nor brings positive spatial technology spillovers effect. However, once the institutional environment variables are introduced, such as the legal system, the marketization level of the real economy, and the marketization level of the virtual economy, the interaction term of manufacturing industries' agglomeration and the legal system has a significantly positive role in promoting regional technological innovation and spatial technology spillovers effect. While in the sample years, the interaction of the manufacturing industries' agglomeration and the marketization level of the real economy, as well as the interaction of the manufacturing industries' agglomeration and the marketization level of the virtual economy does not have a significantly positive role in promoting spatial technology spillovers effect. On the other hand, from the sample of sub-regional perspective, the results of the eastern region of China are consistent with those of the national sample, while the manufacturing industries' agglomeration in the central and western regions of China has little significantly positive effect on spatial technology spillovers. Furthermore this paper makes some policy recommendations on improving the spatial technology spillovers by optimizing the manufacturing industries' agglomeration.
In the new economy context, airports and their surrounding areas have gradually evolved into highly concentrated areas of modern economic activities. Based on the empirical study in the Yangtze River Delta and with the application of industrial and commercial enterprises data, this paper can draw some conclusions as follows: with spatial radius varied from 2.3 to 7.2 km, airport economic zones of major airports have taken shape in the Yangtze River Delta in 2013; as for their land-use density and spatial pattern, the non-agricultural construction land has reached 50% in general, and are inclined to expand to the main city, airport entrances and exits, cargo terminal, and developed surrounding towns; for industrial structure, the enterprises in the airport economic zones have a larger scale and higher hub-orientation index than those in the surroundings. To be more specific, manufacture industry takes up a much higher proportion (> 55%); however, the hub-orientation manufacture only accounts for less than 10%. The proportion of service industry is only around 20%, and the producer services lag behind. The transportation varies greatly, from 1% to 20%; for the assessment of comprehensive development level, the airport economic zones in Shanghai and Wuxi have entered the mature stage, while those of Hangzhou and Nanjing stay in the early growth stage, and Ningbo and Wenzhou in the initial stage. Finally, we examine the factors influencing the development of airport economic zones. The results show that the airport and region are both important for the airport economic zones, and we found that, airports and city influence are listed the top two factor to dominate airport economic zones, with the former playing a more important role in the Yangtze River Delta now; airport location, transportation volume, regional economic level and regional innovation are the effective influencing factors, and the comprehensive transportation system surrounding airports is more important. In contrast, the commuting time from airport to main city has no influence on the airport economic zone development.
Being one of the most effective measures for carbon reduction, the carbon tax policy has been implemented in several countries. At present, a large number of studies primarily focused on the social effects of the carbon tax policy in different countries or regions like OECD countries, UK and New Zealand. While the CGE (Computable General Equilibrium) model has been employed by some scholars to explore the impact of carbon tax policy on macro-economic development in China at the national scale, there is less research exploring the influences of carbon tax on provincial economic development at the regional scale in China. Given that, through establishing a regional CGE model, this article selects Henan province as a case to analyze the economic and social effects of different carbon taxes on energy sectors. Furthermore, according to the requirements of the study, the whole China is divided into two regions (i.e. Henan province and the rest of China) in our regional CGE model, and each region has 30 sectors. This study mainly shows that implementing carbon tax in Henan province can reduce significantly the carbon emissions. More importantly, the higher the carbon tax is, the more reduction in carbon emissions. Conversely, the additive value decreased slightly. Specifically, as far as the energy sectors are concerned, coal mining and washing industry had suffered the biggest negative effects, and its price had increased a lot. As for the other sectors, the carbon tax had a negative impact on agriculture. The rural residents are more sensitive to the carbon tax compared with the urban residents. In addition, considering the impact of carbon tax on regional economic and social development, the policy simulation in terms of recycling the carbon tax to promote the carbon tax neutrality were conducted, which means that, to meet reduction targets of the carbon emission reduction in climate policy, implementing carbon tax policy should have the least influences on regional economic and social development. Two schemes (deduction on the income tax of residents or enterprises, respectively) were applied to examine its impacts. According to the situation in Henan province, in terms of residents, we reduced the income tax of rural residents. As for enterprises, we cut down the income tax of non-energy enterprises. The simulated results suggested that it would be better to recycle the carbon tax by deduction on income tax of rural residents rather than that of enterprises.
Based on panel data of 29 provinces in China, this paper measures the total factor carbon productivity growth rate for each provincial district using Malmquist-Luenberger index and investigates the role of level of informationization in the relationship between development of service industry and growth rate of total factor carbon productivity. The results are as follows. (1) The growth rates of total factor carbon productivity in most provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) are positive. From the perspective of spatial distribution, the average growth rates of total factor carbon productivity in 12 provinces from 1998 to 2012 are negative, including Heilongjiang, Henan, Ningxia, Shanxi, Sichuan, Anhui, Xinjiang, Fujian, Hainan, Hubei, Hunan and Guizhou. The growth rate of total factor carbon productivity in most provinces depends on technological change instead of efficiency change. The decomposition result of the ML index into MLEFFCH index and MLTECH index shows that in 8 provinces, including Beijing, Heilongjiang, Shanxi, Tianjin, Jiangxi, Jilin, Shanxi and Liaoning, the average provincial growth rates of efficiency are positive; in two provinces, including Shanghai and Anhui, the average growth rates of provincial efficiency remain unchanged; in the rest provinces, the average provincial growth rates of efficiency are negative. (2) The level of informationization plays a restrictive role in the positive effect of development of service industry on growth of total factor carbon productivity. The results of fixed effect regression show that both the development of service industry and level of informationization have significantly positive effects on the growth of total factor carbon productivity. However, the results of panel data threshold regression show that when the level of informationization in a province is higher than the threshold level, the positive effect of development of service industry on the total factor carbon productivity growth rate is much higher. Therefore, when it comes to making service industry play its full role in promoting the total factor carbon productivity growth in a certain province, the threshold effect in the level of informationization should be given full consideration.
Taking each of the 58 counties and cities of Jiangsu province as a unit, spatial types and evolutionary process of economy-driven factors and driving forces of economic growth from 1991 to 2013 are quantitatively analyzed by utilizing methods such as Cobb-Douglas production function, entropy value and regression analysis. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) The economy-driven factors have interacted each other in a complicated way. Capital and technology are two main supply factors promoting the economic growth. In terms of demand factors, economic growth driven by consumer demand is increasing, while that driven by investment and export demands are weakening. Considering the factors influencing supply and demand, industrial structure, urban development and structural reform played key roles in the promotion of economic growth. These factors interact and influence each other, leading to the continuous increase in economy and accelerating the economic transformation in this province. (2) The driving forces of economic growth have obviously changed in different phases. The economic growth is the process of profound changes of its driving forces as well. Economic growth in different phases corresponds to different driving forces. (3) The driving forces of economic growth vary clearly in different regions. Taking the driving forces of economic growth in each county or city into account, those in the southern part of Jiangsu are stronger than those in the northern part, and those in the prefecture-level cities stronger than those in rural counties. The driving forces of economic growth in southern Jiangsu surrounded by Lake Taihu, in central Jiangsu along the Yangtze River, and in northern Jiangsu along the East Longhai Railway are all stronger than those in other counties and cities of the same regions. In respect of spatial types of the driving forces of economic growth, industrial upgrading is the most important type. However, the regional variations are remarkable. The main driving forces in southern Jiangsu are innovation- and technology-oriented, while those in central and northern Jiangsu are featured by industrial upgrading and innovation, and industrial upgrading and demands, respectively.
With the rise of creative economy and changes in tourist demands, the development of creative tourism has become a consumption hotspot as well as an effective way to promote transformation and upgrading of tourism. As creative tourism resources are the foundation for creative tourism development, their spatial effect is an important area for regional tourism research; and they play an important role in enhancing the competitiveness of regional tourism. With a case study in the central city of Suzhou, this paper analyzes the spatial effect of creative tourism resources using a number of quantitative models including the nearest neighbor index, disequilibrium analysis index, kernel density, and user thermometric modeling. The result shows that, (1) The integration of creative tourism resources increases the concentration of tourism resources both in the whole city and in subareas of the central city, however, the increment and the spatial distribution of resources vary by subareas; (2) With the integration of the creative resources, the distribution of tourism resources in the central city of Suzhou becomes more concentrated and less balanced; (3) The integration of creative tourism resources greatly enhances the spatial effects of the regional tourism resources. And it converts the central city from a "single core" (Gusu District only) pattern into a "dual core" (Gusu District and Suzhou Industrial Park) pattern.
In the background of economic globalization and informatization, assessing spatial structures of mega-city regions has a long-term tradition in urban research. Network analysis, formulated by multi-disciplines ranging from sociology, information science and geography science, provides a new avenue to explore spatial structures at the regional scale. Based on the flow data of road, ordinary train, CRH (China Railway High-Speed) and Baidu index in 2015, this paper seeks to analyze and evaluate the features and efficiency of regional spatial structure among 25 cities in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD). The results are as follows: (1) Different from some previous studies, the spatial structure of the YRD detected in this paper is manifested in several new characteristics, such as transferring “Z” shape to “one axis and multi-core”, emerging a dynamic shifting node value between core and periphery cities and a tendency of “hierarchy + network”. (2) The innovation of modern transportation and communication technologies have accelerated both agglomeration and diffusion of the sophisticated production and management factors and also increasingly promoted each city node to connect with the cores and produced the main connections with non-adjacent nodes at the same time. Consequently, the network structure of the YRD shows an obvious “core-periphery” pattern. (3) The network efficiency of the YRD is not high because only a small number of cities have had the most optimal efficiency. It is indicated that the YRD has great potential in improving its network efficiency. However, most city nodes perform well in terms of scale efficiency, which is the main reason for the increase in comprehensive efficiency in the future. (4) Most cities in the YRD fail to reach the optimal state in terms of network efficiency. The result implies that the development mode of relying on large-scale investment in exchange for the cities' high speed growth may come to the end. Therefore, for most cities in the YRD, promoting the efficiency of urban development is an essential path to increase the value of each city node in the context of the "new normal". In addition, more attention should be paid to avoid the blind investment and focus on technological progress, which accords with the declaration of innovation-driven transformation proposed in the "13th Five-Year Plan" of the central government.
