Convergence In China Research Articles

Spatial distribution and convergence of provincial carbon intensity in China and its influencing factors: a spatial panel analysis from 2000 to 2017.

Unbalanced and inadequate development in China has resulted in significant temporal and spatial differences in carbon intensity, impeding the achievement of carbon reduction targets. This paper explores the spatial distribution and convergence of China's provincial carbon intensity during 2000-2017 and its influencing factors employing spatial panel techniques. The spatial distribution analysis supports the existence of significant spatial agglomeration and radiation effects in China's provincial carbon intensity, and several provinces play key roles in the spatial distribution of carbon intensity, which are an important focus of carbon emission reduction policies. The results of spatial convergence estimation support that China's provincial carbon intensity presents significant spatial absolute and conditional convergence, and after considering regional differences, the spatial convergence speed is significantly accelerated. Meanwhile, economic level, urbanization, energy consumption structure, and industrial structure have significant spatial radiation effects on carbon intensity, and carbon intensity itself also has a spatial diffusion effect, indicating that carbon emission reduction requires multi-regional coordinated actions. This paper examined the spatial distribution and convergence of China's provincial carbon intensities over 2000-2017. The empirical findings verified the spatial agglomeration and radiation effects, as well as the absolute and conditional spatial convergence of China's provincial carbon intensities, which supports the policy-making related to the carbon reduction in China.

Regional Economic Convergence in China: A Comparative Study of Nighttime Light and GDP

Nighttime lights (NTLs) have been used as a proxy for economic growth in recent years. To verify the effectiveness of NTL in measuring regional economies, this article studies the regional economic convergence phenomenon in China’s provinces by a comparative analysis of NTL data and GDP data from 1992 to 2013. It is found that there is a significant difference between the results of club convergence between NTL and GDP; GDP high-growth clubs are mainly concentrated in the east and central areas, while NTL’s high-growth clubs are mostly concentrated in the central and west areas. Besides, the growth rate gaps between GDP clubs are relatively flat, while the growth rate gaps between NTL clubs are large. From the perspective of influencing, factors of the regional convergence, technological innovation, and industrial structure have a significant impact on GDP and NTL, and industrial structure has opposite effects on GDP clubs and NTL clubs. Besides the above factors, for NTL convergence clubs, population growth rate, economic openness, and resource consumption are also significant.

Research on the Evolution of Textile Technological Convergence in China

Technological convergence (TC) plays a vital role in leading the next generation of technological innovation. Research in this field has practical significance for its ongoing deployment as an innovation-driven strategy in the sustainable development of the textile industry. However, there are few relevant studies, with most of them carried out on only one level, whether from a micro or macro perspective. This study analyses the evolution of TC from both macro (industry) and micro (technical field) levels. A patented co-occurrence method is employed to measure TC and various social network indicators, including density, node strength and the Jaccard coefficient, to measure the evolution of the network and its nodes and edges. The results present that the density of the macro TC network has been increasing and that the industrial technologies that are closely associated with the textile industry include chemical engineering technology, pharmaceutical technology and material technology. Meanwhile, the micro TC network manifests high dependence on proprietary technology, whilst the convergence degree between the core technologies is relatively high. This study proposes that the government should continue to encourage textile enterprises to strengthen TC, particularly their integration with leading technologies, and should strengthen the integration of emerging industrial textiles with national defence, medicine and other related fields to improve innovation speed.

How does economic infrastructure affect industrial energy efficiency convergence? Empirical evidence from China

Examining how economic infrastructure affects China’s industrial energy efficiency (EE) convergence is critical in the process of overall industrial EE improvement, especially under the background of promoting equitable growth and developing a modernized economy. Based on panel data from 30 China’s provinces between 2000 and 2017, this paper explores the existence of industrial EE convergence and examines the influence of economic infrastructure on industrial EE convergence in China and three different regions. The results show clear evidence of convergence in industrial EE for China and the three regions, indicating that the lagging provinces tend to catch up with the advanced ones in the long term. The catch-up speed from the western region is the highest, followed by the central and eastern region. Economic infrastructure has significant impacts on industrial EE convergence in China and the three regions, while the impacts of different types of infrastructure are divergent across region. Energy infrastructure is conducive to industrial EE convergence in the eastern and western region, whereas transport infrastructure makes a better performance in the central region. These results provide useful insights for narrowing the industrial EE gap among regions from the supply side.

Measurement, Temporal-spatial Evolution Characteristics and Countermeasures of High-quality Agricultural Development in China

The evaluation system of China’s high-quality agricultural development is constructed from four aspects: efficiency improvement, innovation-driven, green development, and coordinated sharing, which level is measured based on the entropy weight method (EWM), Besides, using the Theil index decomposition, spatial clustering and convergence theory, this paper analyzes the temporal-spatial evolution characteristics of high-quality agricultural development from 2003 to 2017. The results show that it has obvious spatial agglomeration and convergence in China. First, the quality of China’s agricultural development has steadily improved; besides, the provinces with it are mainly concentrated in the major grain-producing areas in the Northeast Plain and the Yangtze River Basin. Second, it is characterized by conditional convergence in China, and there are also club convergence in major grain-producing areas and non-major grain-producing areas. Third, the conditional convergence rate is 0.067-0.071, the half-life is about 11-12 years, the conditional convergence rate of the main and the non-main production area are 0.095 and 0.075, and the half-life is about 8 years and 10 years, respectively. Finally, combined with the specific statistical indicators, this paper sorted out the reasons restricting the high-quality development of agriculture in various regions and put forward the corresponding countermeasures.

Impact of Knowledge Spillover on Regional Club Convergence in China

Knowledge spillover theory introduces specialized knowledge and human capital accumulation into the production function, breaks through the limitations of traditional economic theory, and illustrates the continuous and permanent source and power of economic growth. This article attempts to study the “club phenomenon” of the uneven development of China’s regional economy from the perspective of knowledge spillover, using the Spatial Dubin Model (SDM) to process China’s provincial data from 1991 to 2015. Studies have shown that knowledge spillovers are conducive to narrowing the gap in the level of economic development between the eastern and central regions of China, but the gap in the level of economic development between the two regions is gradually widening, and there is a “club phenomenon”. Therefore, developing regional cooperation models and focusing on cultivating talents for innovation can improve China’s uneven regional economic development to a certain extent.

Does high-speed railway promote regional innovation growth or innovation convergence?

The paper utilizes an endogenous innovation growth model including high-speed railway (HSR) fares and speeds to explain how HSR affects regional technological innovation. Difference-in-Difference (DID) regression analysis shows that HSR has significantly promoted innovation growth and innovation convergence in China, with the effect value of 14.73% and 5.91% respectively. The conclusion that HSR promotes innovation growth is still valid through endogenous treatment of instrumental variable method. Various robustness analyses show that the more stations or lines connection, the more conducive to promoting innovation growth and innovation convergence. The conclusion is still robust after different time bandwidth is set. Further analysis shows that HSR has significantly promoted the innovation development and innovation convergence within and between the three regions of eastern China, central China and western China. The innovation spillover range of innovation center cities to non-innovation cities is 300 km. In addition, it is found that cities that have not opened HSR can also benefit from the connection of HSR in neighboring cities, thus promoting innovation growth, but the impact on innovation convergence is not as significant as the direct connection of HSR. The policy enlightenment of this paper is that in the face of innovation gap and regional innovation development inequality, in the planning and construction of HSR, it is suggested to coordinate the regional layout of investment in high-speed rail construction, which is not only conducive to promoting the innovation growth of these regions, but also conducive to narrowing the regional innovation development gap. In addition, remote and backward areas should seize the opportunity of opening high-speed railways to promote regional innovative growth, instead of making high-speed railways a channel for factors such as human capital to escape.

The influence of swine fever on China’s pork market based on unit root tests

Swine fever was introduced into China in August 2018 and has influenced Chinese pork market to a large extent. Based on the law of one price (LOOP) theory, this article selects data from January 1, 2014 to November 30, 2019, using unit root test and OLS to examine the convergence in China’s pork market relative to Beijing. It turned out that LOOP did not hold in China before the swine fever but hold after; Only three provinces showed the same results as the national context, while the data of all the other provinces remained stable, and there was no swine fever. Factors influencing the existence of LOOP are analyzed based on the previous results.Therefore, the results show that population, the length of classified highway and the introduction of swine fever are the significant factors; while the introduction of swine fever exerts the largest impact on LOOP in Chinese pork market.

A Stochastic Frontier Approach to Assessing Total Factor Productivity Change in China’s Star-Rated Hotel Industry

Using a stochastic frontier analysis approach and a flexible translog production function considering neutral technological progress, this study assesses technical efficiency change, technological change, and scale change, and further measures the total factor productivity (TFP) change and its convergence of China’s star-rated hotel industry in 31 provinces, municipalities, and regions from 2001 to 2015. The results show that the TFP change of China’s star-rated hotel industry was generally favorable and boosted by both the technical efficiency change and technical change; nevertheless, the scale change hindered and largely caused fluctuations in the TFP change. From a regional economic perspective, the TFP change of the star-rated hotel industry in most of the eight comprehensive economic regions examined was rather stable. While few comprehensive economic regions existed absolute convergence, all of the regions showed significant conditional convergence except for the Eastern Coastal region.

The spatial-temporal evolution and spatial convergence of ecological total factor productivity in china

Based on the theory of strong sustainability, this paper evaluates the ecological environment from two aspects of ecological environment construction and ecological environment damage, and incorporates the ecological environment into the research framework of total factor productivity (TFP), and proposes a new ecological total factor productivity (ETFP) index, and studies the source of factors, spatial-temporal evolution and spatial convergence of the ETFP in China from 2001 to 2018. The results show the following: ETFP is driven by technological efficiency, and the stage fluctuation differentiation is obvious; the growth rate of the sub-factors of the “labor —energy — ecological environment construction — capital” decreases in sequence, and the contribution degree of the factors of “labor — ecological environment construction — energy — capital” keep decreasing in turn; the distribution pattern evolves from unipolar to bimodal. The path dependence of TFP on capital, labor and energy is relatively strong; There was a spatial convergence in china's provincial ETFP, and convergence speed was accelerated of 4.07% under Geo-economic weight matrix. Considering the influence of institutional factors, environmental decentralization and fiscal decentralization can put off the ETFP’s increasing speed, but the interaction between them can drive the ETFP’s growth.

The role of Provincial Government Spending Composition in growth and convergence in China

China’s development policy since 1978 has differed across regions. With rapid aggregate growth has come widening regional inequality. The fiscal decentralisation reforms in 1994 shifted political pressure onto provincial officials to boost local growth through local public investments. These investments affect regional convergence by counteracting regulatory frictions in factor accumulation, and can also determine steady-state growth. However, the effect of public spending allocations across physical and human capital on growth and convergence processes is empirically unexplored for Chinese provinces. We take provincial time-series data on public spending by category, finding local public spending and its components augment convergence rates differently across regions. Spending on education and health contributes significantly more to growth and convergence than capital spending, confirming that the public capital-spending bias is not a local growth-optimising strategy. We suggest a policy of aligning local government promotion incentives to human capital targets to correct local resource misallocation.

The economic benefits of returned-global Chinese IPOs

On June 6, 2018, China has adopted a new policy that allows overseas-listed Chinese companies to launch secondary listings (hereafter, returned-global Chinese IPOs) in the domestic market. This study examines how the returned-global Chinese IPOs affect financial reporting quality, information environments, and IPO pricing in the domestic market. We find that these newly public companies in China exhibit lower discretionary accruals (and their components), lower stock price synchronicity, and lower first-day underpricing upon IPOs. Our difference-in-differences tests reveal that IFRS convergence in China mitigates overseas listing advantage of the returned-global firms. Overall, this study highlights the economic benefits of overseas listing of the returned-global Chinese IPOs and the impact of the change in financial accounting standards on the IPO market. Our evidence highlights the bright side of the recent regulatory change in China.

Agricultural productivity convergence in China

This article investigates the progress and prospects of agricultural productivity catch-up in China since the rural reform. A model averaging method is employed to jointly consider four productivity estimates, which can better capture the province-specific and non-linear trend of productivity that was estimated with bias in previous literature. This article then utilizes three convergence tests to evaluate whether convergence has occurred and explores channels through which agricultural convergence can be achieved or accelerated. Using three panels at the province, county and commodity levels, this article concludes that agriculture is not on the right track to catch-up, since 23 out of 28 provinces and 19 out of 23 farm commodities fail to converge. However, the productivity gap may diminish in the future if the irrigation, education, public expenditure and structural transformation for lagging provinces can be improved.

REGIONAL CONVERGENCE IN LARGE EMERGING ECONOMIES: A DISTRIBUTION DYNAMICS APPROACH

Rapid growth in large emerging economies has been spread unequally across their regions leading to growing income disparities. This paper examines the distribution of regional output per capita and the evolution of its shape in Brazil, China, India, and Russia from the mid-1990s to the mid-2010s. A comparative analysis of convergence is conducted using a nonparametric methodology. The results reveal different distribution dynamics across the four economies. Chinese regions with below-median output per capita have the highest probability of transitioning toward higher-income levels, while their Brazilian counterparts are trapped at the bottom of the distribution. Although India has the lowest and Russia one of the highest regional income inequalities, they display similar divergence patterns exemplified by high persistence at both ends of the distribution. Our findings indicate that government spending and the rule of law are the major driving forces behind regional convergence, except in Russia where they have the opposite effect. Innovation and property rights also promote convergence in China, but cause regional divergence in India.

Modulation of the impacts of Madden–Julian Oscillation on winter rainfall in China by El Niño‐Southern Oscillation

AbstractThis study revealed the modulation of the impacts of Madden–Julian Oscillation (MJO) on winter rainfall in China by El Niño‐Southern Oscillation (ENSO) using reanalysis data and statistical analysis. When MJO is active over the Indian Ocean, its impacts are strengthened by El Niño, leading to enhanced positive rainfall anomalies in eastern China. However, the effects of MJO are counteracted by La Niña; thus, significant positive rainfall anomalies exist only in Zhejiang Province and adjacent areas. MJO activity over the western Pacific induces opposite rainfall anomalies in South China between El Niño and La Niña winters; rainfall in South China increases (decreases) in El Niño (La Niña) winters. Such differences in rainfall anomalies are closely related to anomalous circulation and moisture transport. Anomalous southwesterlies in eastern China are enhanced in El Niño winters when MJO is active over the Indian Ocean, which leads to increased moisture transport towards China and stronger ascending motion in eastern China. But the anomalous southwesterlies are weakened in La Niña winters, thereby resulting in less moisture transport and convergence. When MJO is active over the western Pacific, anomalous northeasterlies in mainland China are enhanced (weakened) in La Niña (El Niño) winters, which strengthens (weakens) the moisture divergence and descending motion in China. Moisture convergence anomalies that explain the rainfall anomalies in ENSO winters are mainly attributed to the effects of low‐frequency background state (LFBS) moisture and meridional winds. It was found that ENSO modulates the impacts of MJO by two main ways. First, ENSO can regulate the intensity and distribution of MJO activity. Therefore, MJO in the same phase will lead to different circulation and moisture transport anomalies in China. Second, ENSO‐induced LFBS circulation and moisture anomalies can also influence the moisture convergence in China, which will strengthen or weaken the effects of MJO.

Technology intensity and ownership in the Chinese manufacturing industry: A labor productivity decomposition approach

China's manufacturing industry has registered phenomenal development in the past 40 years,which has become the most remarkable aspect of China's economic miracle. In this article,we interrogate labor productivity growth mechanisms in that industry during 1998–2007. Specifically,we assess the relative importance of efficiency,technology,and capital deepening changes in the growth process. Methodologically,we employ a nonparametric tripartite decomposition while controlling for technology and ownership heterogeneity using the concept of metafrontier. We find that most of the productivity growth was driven by capital deepening (125.60%),followed by technology progress (62.47%),and a small fraction (11.23%) was due to efficiency improvement. We also demonstrate strong productivity convergence in China's manufacturing industry,which was driven by technology change and capital deepening effects. These results suggest that China's overall industry development benefited from market mechanism in resource allocation and technology diffusion,but further improvement is possible. Finally,we point out that China's industry can still benefit from capital accumulation in the near future but long-term productivity growth must be based on technology progress.

Research on TFP change and convergence of China’s regional real estate industry

The added value method is used to screen the input and output indicators of the real estate industry. The DEA-Malquist method was used to measure the total factor productivity (TFP) of the real estate industry in China’s 30 provinces from 2006 to 2017. Further, the convergence test of the real estate industry TFP in eastern, central and western China was conducted. It was found that the average growth rate of real estate industry TFP in China’s 30 provinces during the period was 3.3%. Technical efficiency was the main driving force for TFP growth, and the contribution of technological progress was relatively small. In the improvement of technical efficiency, pure technical efficiency is obviously improved, and the improvement of scale efficiency is limited. The absolute β convergence test was carried out. From the national perspective, the TFP gap in the real estate industry in each province has a significant narrowing trend; In terms of regions, the TFP gap in the real estate industry in the eastern provinces has a narrowing trend, but it is not significant; The growth of TFP in the real estate industry in the central region has a significant catch-up characteristic, and the TFP gap between provinces has gradually narrowed; The TFP gap in the real estate industry in the western provinces has significantly expanded.

Sino-Russian Partnership in the Face of Changing Balance of Power and Internal Barriers

The aim of this article is to describe and critically assess the main contentious issues in Sino-Russian relations and to explain how they affect the development of this relationship. First of all, the article examines the attitudes of China and Russia towards their relationship in the context of the changing distribution of power and increasing competition in Central Asia. Secondly, the influence of the collectively understood West on the dynamics of the Sino-Russian partnership is analyzed, with particular emphasis on the role of the United States. These applications are supplemented with an assessment of regional perception of relations in the Asia-Pacific region and a study of trade between two parties. The author does not limit himself to one methodological approach, drawing from the Balance of Threat Theory, the concept of security dilemma and analyzing political discourse and structure of bilateral trade. The results of the analysis indicate the existence of relatively permanent and significant barriers, suggesting that the Sino-Russian relations will not reach a higher level of intensity than is the case at present. The current form of cooperation enables both parties to pursue common interests without risking an assertive reaction from the United States. Only sudden and far-reaching changes, harmful to both countries, have a chance to bring about a convergence of China’s and Russia’s interests sufficient to create a fully operational alliance.

Spatial distribution characteristics and convergence of China's regional energy intensity: An industrial transfer perspective

With the economic transformation and regional economic restructuring of China, there is a significant inter-regional transfer trend of industries among the eastern, central, western and northeastern regions. The industrial transfer is able to change the spatial distribution of regional energy intensity by affecting the regional industrial structure, thus impacting the convergence of energy intensity. This paper established a spatial Durbin panel model, and used the relevant data of thirty administrative regions of China from 2004 to 2017 to empirically study the impacts of industrial transfer on regional energy intensity. The results showed that: (1) As a whole, the energy intensity of China's regions was low in the southeast region and high in the northwest region, and there was a significant positive spatial autocorrelation among the energy intensity of different regions. (2) There was β-convergence in the regional energy intensity. It indicated that, on the one hand, the differences in the energy intensity of China's different regions were being gradually narrowed; on the other hand, the energy intensity of each region would converge to its own steady state. (3) The industrial transfer and economic development could promote the convergence of the regional energy intensity.

Academia-industry collaboration and regional innovation convergence in China

ABSTRACTThis article investigates the impact of academia-industry collaboration (AIC) on regional innovation convergence in China from the perspective of innovation ecosystem. Using the methods of σ-convergence and β-convergence, we explore the effect of AIC on innovation convergence among provinces over time, taking into account of the flow of talents, regional economic development level and degree of openness. AIC is classified into two types: university-industry cooperation (UIC) and industry-research-institute cooperation (IRC). We find that while innovation performance is divergent across regions, AIC can significantly weaken the divergence, and the effect of UIC on the convergence is especially obvious. After dividing the country into eastern, central and western subsamples, we find that AIC significantly promotes regional innovation convergence in the central area. Both UIC and IRC significantly inhibit innovation divergence in the central sample. Furthermore, UIC also shows the same effect in the western sample.