Chinese Marine Economy Development: Dynamic Evolution and Spatial Difference

Abstract

This study focuses on China’s coastal area and its marine economic development. Applying the information diffusion method, the study establishes a kernel density function and its decomposition using a marine economic per capita as the index of the model to depict the dynamic evolution law and the internal influential factors of the Chinese marine economy during 1996–2013. The relative development rate was introduced to analyze the spatial differences in the marine economy’s development. In this way, space and time dimensions fully characterized the evolution of the Chinese marine economy. Additionally, the influence of growth and inequality in the process of its development can be analyzed. The study shows that the Chinese marine economy as a whole has been growing, and regional marine economic development is relatively coordinated. In addition, the marine economy began to develop even more rapidly after 2004. There are three factors affecting the dynamic evolution of China’s marine economy: first, the most influential mean effect, followed by, second, the variance effect, and third, the least influential residual effect. The biggest influence on the dynamic evolution of the marine economy is the improvement of the development level of the marine economy in the coastal area. Meanwhile, due to the existence of inequality, provinces at higher development levels are more dispersed. Furthermore, the existence of the residual effect weakens the influence of the mean effect, and the influence on the dynamic evolution of the marine economy continuously increases. In the analysis of the influencing factors of the evolution and spatial difference of marine economic development, the level of opening to the outside world, the level of investment in fixed assets and the industrial structure have a positive role in promoting economic development. However, capital investment in scientific human research has a negative correlation with economic development, and does not pass the significant test. The difference in regional development levels and development speed is also very apparent; namely, the provinces with higher development levels generally displayed faster development speeds while those with lower development levels showed slower development speeds across the four periods analyzed.