Temporal and Spatial Evolution of Economic Quality Difference between North and South China

Abstract

Based on the “Five development Concepts”, this paper uses the entropy method to measure the economic quality of 336 prefecture-level regions and above in China from 1991 to 2020, and uses Dagum Gini coefficient, Kernel density estimation, spatial autocorrelation and standard deviation ellipse to explore the spatio-temporal evolution characteristics of North-South economic quality differences. The main conclusions are as follows: 1) From 1991 to 2020, the economic quality of the north and south continues to grow, and the spatial distribution pattern shows a relatively significant feature of “the south is relatively high, the north is relatively low” and “the coastal economic belt is relatively high, and the inland city is relatively low”. 2) In the past 30 years, the relative difference between the north and south regions has fluctuated and decreased, while the absolute difference has increased. 3) The economic quality of southern cities has a more significant spatial agglomeration. HH agglomeration and LL agglomeration are dominant in the south, while LL agglomeration is more inclined in the north. 4) The economic mass center of gravity in the north and the south showed a migration trend of “northeast-north” and “northwest-southwest” respectively.