Regional Coordination Development Research Articles

Improvement Pathways for Urban Land Use Efficiency in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Agglomeration at the County Level: A Context-Dependent DEA Based on the Closest Target.

One of the most effective ways to achieve sustainable land use and the regional coordinated development of urban agglomerations lies in improving the urban land use efficiency (ULUE) of both large, medium, and small cities and small towns. However, in previous studies, less attention has been paid to pathways for potential improvement, especially at the county level. The main purpose of this paper is to examine potential improvement paths for the ULUE at the county level in urban agglomerations, while attempting to provide more practical targets for improvement and formulate more reasonable improvement steps for inefficient counties. Therefore, a total of 197 counties in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration (BTHUA) in 2018 were taken as examples to build a context-dependent data envelopment analysis (DEA) model based on the closest target. In addition, by utilizing methods such as the significant difference test and system clustering analysis, the shortest path and steps to achieve efficiency were identified for inefficient counties, and the characteristics of improvement paths at different levels were summarized. Furthermore, improvement pathways were compared for two dimensions: administrative type and region. The results showed that the causes of polarization for ULUE at different levels were mainly reflected in more complex targets to be improved in the middle- and low-level counties than at high levels. Improving environmental and social benefits was essential to achieving efficiency in most inefficient counties, especially at the middle and low levels. The improvement paths for inefficient counties between different administrative types, as well as the prefecture-level cities, were heterogeneous. The results of this study can provide a policy and planning basis for improving urban land use. This study is of practical significance in accelerating the development of urbanization and the promotion of regional coordination and sustainable development.

Two-step allocation of CO2 emission quotas in China based on multi-principles: Going regional to provincial

In order to ensure the implementation of the emission trading scheme (ETS), the allocation of CO2 emission quotas in China’s provinces is of significant importance. Unlike previous studies that allocated CO2 emission quotas directly to Chinese provinces, we propose a two-step allocation scheme of “country to region” and “region to province” to formulate the provincial CO2 emission quotas allocation. In the first step, considering the regional coordination development, the Shapley value method is used to assign the CO2 emission quotas to China’s eastern, central, and western regions by simulating the regional collaborative abatement. In the second step, we use the entropy method to obtain the initial CO2 emission quotas for each province combining the principles of fairness, efficiency, feasibility, and sustainability. Then, a zero-sum gains data envelopment analysis (ZSG-DEA) model is applied to evaluate initial allocation efficiency and reallocate the CO2 emission quotas to realize efficiency optimization within the region. The results show that the eastern region obtains the largest CO2 emission quotas, followed by central and western regions. The energy-abundant and economic-prosperous provinces, such as Shandong, Hebei, Inner Mongolia, and Xinjiang, face great pressures on CO2 reduction. Compared with existing literature, the proposed scheme’s regional allocation results are more balanced, which will narrow the gaps of regional economic development. Since the emission reduction pressure varies in provinces, developing differentiated policies is critical to realizing China’s reduction targets. By considering regional fairness, this paper provides a reference for allocating CO2 emission quota among provinces to improve adaptability to the current conditions of China.

Coordinated Development of Innovation System in China’s Yangtze River Economic Belt, a Demand and Supply Perspective

The Development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) is not only a major regional coordination development strategy in China but also a core carrier supporting China’s innovation-driven development. Under this background, this paper explored the evolution, spatial difference, and coordination development of the regional innovation system in the period of 2007 to 2017 from the demand and supply perspective. We found that, during the study period, the development level of the innovation demand subsystem (IDS) and innovation supply subsystem (ISS), as well as their coordinated development, all showed an increasing trend. The development gap of IDS and the coordinated development among cities in YREB was quite balanced, while there existed a large gap among cities in YREB in the development of ISS. The development of IDS was better than the development of ISS in most of the cities of YREB, indicating that the innovation development of cities in YREB needs supply-side structural reform urgently. Most cities in YREB were at the moderately or slightly uncoordinated development phase, and Shanghai was the only city with coordinated development between IDS and ISS. This paper enriches the regional innovation system from a new perspective, the demand and supply perspective, as well as providing suggestions for the coordinated development of the regional innovation system in YREB.

The Construction of Development Zones by Local Governments: A Looking-around Choice?

Xi Jinping’s report to the 19th CPC National Congress profoundly expounded that ‘China’s economy has shifted from high speed growth stage to high quality development stage’, emphasizing the implementation of regional coordination development strategy. As an important carrier to promote local economic growth and national regional development strategy, the development zones have made important contributions to the rapid development of China’s economy, and also provide a unique perspective for understanding local governments’ behavior and China’s economic growth mode. The repeated construction and disordered expansion of development zones are the severe problem that has plagued the sustained and healthy development of China’s economy for a long time. Based on the data of 100 cities from 2004 to 2014, the spatial panel model is used to study the motivations for the establishment of the development zones by the local governments from the perspective of spatial strategy interaction. It arrives at the conclusions as follows: firstly, the local governments fully consider and refer to the decisions of their ‘neighbors’ when taking the construction of development zones into account; if the number of adjacent development zones increases, the number of local development zones increases accordingly, explaining the nature reason for repeated construction of development zones to a certain extent; secondly, after investigating the regional differences of strategic activities in the development zones, we find that the spatial strategy interaction of constructing development zones is stronger in the central and western cities than that in the eastern cities; the scattered distribution of the central and western development zones causes the waste of resources and reduces the factor allocation efficiency; thirdly, industrial structure, infrastructure, land prices and other factors have significant impacts on the establishment of development zones, and constitute important constraints on setting up development zones by local governments; the course of development zones is not a natural growth subjecting to resource constraints, but a result of regulation by the local government policy interaction and national policy control; fourthly, further empirical evidence shows that fiscal decentralization and the competition of attracting investment under the incentive of political promotion of local governments have strengthened local governments’ motivations for competitive strategies in the establishment of development zones. Consequently, effective reform measures should be taken in aspects of political performance appraisal system, fiscal and tax system, and local debt management system, so as to strictly control the blind competition of excessively constructing development zones among local governments. The central government should encourage local governments to shift from economic growth mode driven by preferential policies and factor input to new development mode driven by reform and innovation. Hence, local governments can promote the development and upgrading of development zones, and further play an important role in the construction of modern economic system.

Eco-geographic environment and regional development in Xinjiang of China

The study on relationship between eco-geographic environment (EGE) and regional development (RD) is of theoretical and practical significance to promote the comprehensive study on nature and human factors and regional coordination development. Based on the evaluation index system and models of EGE and RD, Quadrant Analysis Method (QAM) and the Coordination Degree and Coordinated Development Degree Model (CDCDDM) were applied to studying the relationship between EGE and RD in Xinjiang in this paper. The results show that Xinjiang can be divided into four type regions according to the relationship between EGE and RD, namely high coordination region (HCR), overloading development region (ODR), low coordination region (LCR) and potential development region (PDR). Most areas of Xinjiang belong to LCR which can not bear a larger population and support large-scale economic development. HCR, ODR and PDR, which are mainly distributed in piedmont oases and take basin as unit, should be focused on in the development of Xinjiang. The EGE has great influence on RD, and there is serious contradiction between them. Relevant suggestions on development strategies were put forward according to the character of different type regions, and the key regions of macro-layout of RD in Xinjiang were pointed out.