Unbalanced Development Research Articles

Regional Culture and Digital Financial Inclusion in China

Unbalanced development among regions is a prominent feature of the current situation of inclusive finance. Few works have been done on how regional culture affects the imbalance of inclusive financial development. The authors try to investigate this issue using yearly data of digital financial inclusion in China spanning from 2011 to 2020 and the Hofstede regional culture of China. The results reveal regional culture could be the potential driver which leads to regional imbalance of the development of digital financial inclusion in China. Specifically, under Chinese historical culture background, financial inclusion is positively related with indulgence regionally, while individualism or power distance could exert negative impact. The findings are verified by a two-stage least square approach. Due to the anonymity and platform dependence of digital financial, Hofstede culture could make sense by influencing public trust in the financial sector, the internet, and unfamiliar relationships.

Construction of China's Common Prosperity Index: an empirical analysis based on AHP-DEMATEL method

Common prosperity is the essential requirement of socialism and common aspiration of the people. At present, the problem of unbalanced and insufficient development is still prominent in China, and the gap between urban and rural areas in terms of development and income distribution is large. As China embarks on a new journey to fully build a modern socialist country, there is a long way to go in realizing the common prosperity of all the people. Therefore, it is particularly important to study the statistical measurement of China's common prosperity index. This paper selects the measurement method of China's common prosperity index as the research object, constructs the index evaluation system of China's common prosperity index from three dimensions of development, sharing and sustainability, adopts AHP-DEMATEL method, dimensionless processing and negative index processing to build the common prosperity index measurement model, and uses SPSSPRO, SPSSAU and other program processing software to program and solve the model, and calculates the China Common Prosperity Index for 2019-2022. Finally, for the synthetic index, the empirical analysis was carried out, which concluded that in recent years, China has effectively achieved high-quality development with sustainable development as the main direction, but there are problems such as large differences between urban and rural areas and income distribution. This paper not only provides new ideas for the construction of China's common prosperity index evaluation system and model, but puts forward countermeasures and suggestions for the development of common prosperity, which has certain reference value.

Collaborative Development and Transportation Volume Regulation Strategy for an Urban Agglomeration

Transportation plays an important role in urban development and the formation of urban agglomerations. Indexes including urban centrality, urban development intensity, and degree of urban development imbalance are defined to measure the level of urban development, and are taken as the basis for transportation regulation within urban agglomerations. Regulation of transportation volume is divided into static and dynamic regulation, and this paper studies static regulation. There are two purposes for static regulation. One is to solve the problems of unbalanced urban development and collaborative development, and the other is to solve the problem of rational utilization of the highway transport network in an urban agglomeration so that the total transportation volume of the urban agglomeration does not exceed the total transportation volume that the transport network can bear, realizing coordinated transport, improving transport efficiency, and reducing traffic congestion and traffic accidents. A distributed intelligent regulation model based on the principle of game control is proposed, which is divided into three layers: macro-regulation (government layer), meso-regulation (urban agglomeration layer), and micro-regulation (individual city game layer). The regulation strategies and methods of the urban agglomeration layer and individual city game layer are given, and are verified and illustrated using as the research object called the Jilin Province urban agglomeration in the northeast of China. The paper contributes to the field by presenting innovative research and provides important theories and methods for collaborative development and transportation within urban agglomerations.

Current trends in the incidence of Urological malignancy at a tertiary level hospital in the northern part of Bangladesh

The second most common cause of death is malignancy. In clinical practice, genitourinary tumours are commonly encountered. Urological malignancies are raising due to increasing tobacco consumption, air and water pollution (arsenic, nitrate, chlorinated hydrocarbon) by unbalanced development, unhealthy diet, chronic infection, uncontrolled pesticides & fungicides used, food adulteration, using Chinese herbal products containing aristolochic acid, obesity and longer life expectancy. Over the past few years, advancement of diagnostic imaging, surgical technique, radiotherapy, chemotherapeutics and targeted agents have helped improve treatment outcomes. The incidence of urological malignancies is increasing like other malignancies in Bangladesh, which is poorly addressed. There is generally poor documentation of urological malignancies in Bangladesh. This study was carried out to document the pattern and distribution of urological malignancies in Rajshahi Medical College, Rajshahi, Bangladesh. Bangladesh J. Urol. 2022; 25(2): 98-105

The Spatiotemporal Pattern Evolution and Driving Force of Tourism Information Flow in the Chengdu–Chongqing City Cluster

In recent years, the tourism industry has developed rapidly. However, traditional tourism information has the disadvantages of slow response speed and limited information content, which cannot reflect the evolution trend of spatial and temporal patterns of tourism information in time. Here, based on the Baidu Index, we construct an evaluation framework to analyse the spatial and temporal flow of tourism information in the Chengdu–Chongqing urban cluster from 2011 to 2021. Then, we analyse the urban links between different network levels from the evolution pattern. Finally, we use the geodetector model to analyse its driving mechanism. The results show that Chengdu and Chongqing are the most active cities in the study area in terms of tourism information. The unbalanced development of tourism information between Chengdu and Chongqing and other cities in the region gradually deepens during the period 2011–2019 (polarization effect), but the unbalanced development moderates after 2019. On the other hand, cities in the middle of the Chengdu–Chongqing cluster always have weak agglomeration effects of tourism information. Cities with high tourism information outflow rates in the Chengdu–Chongqing city cluster are mainly concentrated around Chengdu. The average outflow rate of Deyang is the highest, at 27.8%. Cities with low tourist information outflow rates are primarily located in the west, central and south. Ya’an is the city with the lowest outflow rate, with an average of −62.2%. Specifically, Chengdu is the dominant and most radiantly influential city. The tourism information of the Chengdu–Chongqing urban cluster shows a radial network with Chengdu and Chongqing as the core. The driving force analysis shows that the push factor of tourist source, such as the number of people buying pension insurance, is the core driving mechanism, while the pull factor of destination, such as the park green area, and resistance factors such as psychological distance, are in the secondary position. In general, this paper uses Internet tourism data to expand the traditional tourism information research of the Chengdu–Chongqing urban cluster, which can better respond to the changes and needs of the tourism market and provide reference for the spatial optimization of tourism destinations.

Ecological Welfare Performance Evaluation and Spatial–Temporal Difference Evolution of Blue Economic Zones: A Case Study of the Blue Economic Zone of Shandong Peninsula

The construction and development of the Blue Economic Zone on the Shandong Peninsula in China was elevated to a national strategy in 2011, and it has achieved year-on-year economic growth, driving the economic development of Shandong Province. However, it has also generated problems, such as a fragile ecological environment, unbalanced regional development, and prominent human–land conflicts. Therefore, on the basis of the idea of green sustainable development, this paper measures the ecological welfare performance of seven prefecture-level cities in the Blue Economic Zone of Shandong Peninsula from 2011 to 2020 using an entropy-weighted model together with the TOPSIS method. It then analyzes their spatial distribution characteristics using the natural breaks method. Our findings show that the overall ecological welfare performance level in the Shandong Peninsula BEZ shows a stable upward trend, and that the ecological welfare performance of each city is similar to that of the divided region. The ecological welfare performance levels of Weifang, Rizhao, and Binzhou are relatively low. Dongying, Weihai, Qingdao, and Yantai form a cluster of cities with high ecological welfare performance. Therefore, for the advancement of the Shandong Peninsula BEZ, the government should the government should reasonably deploy the industrial structure; actively implement industrial transformation; strengthen the synergistic development among cities to achieve complementary advantages, coordinating the growth of rural and urban areas; and improve the social security system to achieve high-quality sustainable development in the Shandong Peninsula BEZ.

Will carbon emission trading policy improve the synergistic reduction efficiency of pollution and carbon? Evidence from 216 Chinese cities

AbstractBased on the panel data of 216 Chinese cities from 2008 to 2018, the synergistic reduction efficiency of pollution and carbon (SREPC) was calculated using the super‐efficiency slack‐based measure model. Differences‐in‐differences (DID), propensity score matching (PSM)–DID, and spatial‐DID were adopted to study the impact of the carbon emission trading (CET) policy on SREPC. The study results show that SREPC was not improved overall, with an unbalanced development characteristic of high efficiency in the east and low efficiency in the west. The Meta‐frontier results show that there were indeed significant differences between pilot and non‐pilot cities before and after the implementation of the CET policy. Mechanism tests reveal that CET promoted SREPC by improving energy efficiency and optimizing industrial structures. Spatial analysis shows that CET had spatial spillover effects and decreased SREPC in neighboring cities. These reduction effects occurred in neighboring non‐pilot cities and showed an inverted U‐shaped relationship with increasing geographical distance, particularly significant within 500–600 km. Inverse data envelopment analysis shows that CET can utilize the synergistic reduction potential of pollution and carbon.

Analysis of the development course of traditional Chinese medicine standardization and recommendations on future work

This paper systematically reviews the development course of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) standardization. Based on the characteristics of TCM standardization at different stages, the development course can be divided into 3 stages, namely the “initial development stage” (from the 1980s to the “10th Five-Year Plan” period), the “rapid development stage” (from the “11th Five-Year Plan” period to the “13th Five-Year Plan” period), and the “high-quality development stage” (from the “14th Five-Year Plan” period to the present). The “initial development stage” is characterized by the emergence of awareness regarding TCM standardization, the initial exploration of TCM standardization, and a gradual but slow progress in development. During the “rapid development stage,” relevant government departments began integrating TCM standardization into development plans, resulting in the extensive development of the TCM standard system and its supporting structures. Since the commencement of the “high-quality development stage,” TCM standardization has progressively shifted from a quantity-oriented model to 1 emphasizing quality and efficiency. Overall, TCM standardization has made remarkable progress after more than 40 years of development. However, it still faces various challenges, including unbalanced development in the standard system, the need for improvement in the development quality of group standards, and insufficient levels of promotion and application. It is recommended to further enhance the formulation of national and industry TCM standards, implement relevant management measures, promote the innovative implementation and application of TCM standards, establish an integrated, comprehensive service platform for TCM standards, and strengthen the talent training for TCM standardization.

Decision support framework adapted to local conditions to select technologies for rural domestic sewage treatment in the Yangtze River Economic Belt

The construction of domestic sewage treatment facilities plays a prominent role in solving rural water pollution and thus keeping the environment cleaner. Considering the applicability of the technology, the selection based on the sewage treatment decision framework is necessary. Although there are various sewage treatment technologies (STTs) available, the decision frameworks that adapt to local conditions for different rural areas are limited. This study proposed a new decision support framework for the suitability selection of rural domestic STTs. It integrated the exploratory factor analysis (EFA), the mathematical model of quantitative relationship (MMQR), and the gray relational analysis (GCA) into the framework. EFA was applied to construct different application scenarios, quantitative relationships between scenarios and technical applications were established through MMQR, and GCA was used to identify the correlation between different standards. The framework has been tested and validated on real case studies in rural areas of the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB). The results clearly explain the technology selection process and justify the framework's user-friendliness and reliability in case studies. The proposed framework can provide scientific decision-making support for the selection of alternative technologies for rural sewage treatment in the YREB and also offer help for relevant research in other areas with unbalanced economic development.

Contending fan engagement strategies in China's translocal economy: The case of Tibetan cyber star Ding Zhen

The Ding Zhen phenomenon saw a young Tibetan herder from Litang County of Sichuan Province gain a spotlight within China’s new-media celebrity industry, introducing a mode of translocal connectedness through a fan economy. The mode of connectedness features social engagement between Ding Zhen’s extra-local fans and a state-owned company in Litang with aims to profit from the influence of this cyber star to develop ethnic tourism, in line with the trend of using technological marketing solutions for poverty alleviation. Interacting with Litang’s media tactic, Ding Zhen’s fan communities on two Super Topics (超话) on Weibo compete to define proper fan behaviour and champion the rights and subject personhood of their idol beyond the limits of his localized identity. At the same time, the company aligns with the state’s stance on fan disciplining as a way of regulating fan friction and activism. The challenges faced by fans within the current media climate as they attempt to uphold fan subculture, as well as those faced by a highland ethnic town grappling with the complexities of unbalanced spatial development, serve as the underlying factors driving translocal cooperation and conflicts. In their intertwined situations, both extra-local fans and the local community seek empowerment, navigating their tensions towards a dynamic of accommodation.

An Exploration of Child-Friendly Block Renewal based on the Experience of London Borough of Hackney

With the continuous progress of the society, children's needs for urban space have received continuous attention from all walks of life. The construction of child-friendly cities has become an important index to measure the level of civilization and development of cities. The development of child-friendly cities has become one of the strategies to solve the unbalanced and inadequate social development. At present, there are many inconveniences for children in China's urban space, and it is still necessary to improve the construction of blocks suitable for children's activities. Driven by the child-friendly concept, it is necessary to actively build city block space with priority, safety and fun for children to actively participate in Xiaoxihu block in Nanjing, China needs to be further improved in child-friendly construction. Through learning from the construction experience of London borough of Hackney in London, the paper summarized relevant policies and space construction methods in child-friendly aspects, and provided corresponding suggestions for the renovation of Xiaoxihu block, hoping to provide reference for more city spaces in our country.

Study on Urbanization in Liaoning Province

In recent years, there are some problems in the urbanization of Liaoning Province, such as slow economic growth, serious brain drains, unbalanced regional development and so on. If there is no scientific research guidance, the development of new urbanization in Liaoning Province will only be like a headless fly, and ultimately affect the healthy economic and social development of Liaoning Province. In order to solve these problems properly, the comprehensive level of the new type of urbanization in Liaoning Province should be studied. In the paper, a comprehensive evaluation index system is constructed, 13 specific evaluation indexes are selected. Principal component analysis is used to analyze the factors influencing the process of new urbanization. The evaluation index and statistical method can be used as a reference for the study on the comprehensive level of new urbanization in the future prediction.

Research on Sustainable Development of Food Systems Based on Data Mining Technology

With the progress of society, the problem of people's food and clothing has been basically solved, but the unbalanced development makes the level of sustainability of the food system incompatible with the level of modern technological development. Based on SPSS, MATLAB, and PYTHON computing software and data mining techniques such as factor analysis and time series analysis, this paper constructs a food system security evaluation index system and gives the contribution rate of each index to the efficiency, effectiveness, equity, and sustainability of the food system security. A linear programming model favoring the sustainable development of the food system was constructed, and the incentive strategy for sustainable development was given according to the load of sustainable development factors. The validity and feasibility of the model were tested.

How the rural infrastructure construction drives rural economic development through rural living environment governance—case study of 285 cities in China

With deepening of rural revitalization strategy, rural infrastructure construction plays an important role in local economic development and living environment governance. Based on the mediation model, this paper takes case study of 285 cities in China from 2017 to 2022 as samples, constructs the explanatory variable, the explained variable and the mediator variable by entropy method, empirically analyzes the impact of rural infrastructure construction on rural living environment governance and rural economic development, as well as the mediation role played by rural living environment governance. It is found that there is a significant positive impact between rural infrastructure construction and rural economic development, and rural infrastructure construction can promote economic development through rural living environment governance. Further analysis show that the impact of rural infrastructure construction on rural economic development presents heterogeneity, and the impacts of rural infrastructure construction on local economic development and on local economic development through living environment governance in the eastern and central China is stronger than that in the western China. After controlling a series of variables related to rural infrastructure construction, and performing endogeneity tests and robustness tests such as tail-shrinkage regression and principal component analysis, the regression results are still robust. This paper firstly provides scientific empirical evidence for the hypothesis that rural infrastructure construction promotes local economic development through rural living environment governance, and secondly confirms the necessity of strengthening rural infrastructure construction in China to promote rural revitalization, providing a policy basis for scientific decision-making, and finally finds an important way out to solve the problem of unbalanced economic development in rural areas to some extent.

Retracted: Dynamic Alterations and the Affecting Attributes of the Unbalanced Economic Development in the Basin of the Yellow River: Analysis Utilizing Population-Weighted Coefficient of Variation

Retracted: Dynamic Alterations and the Affecting Attributes of the Unbalanced Economic Development in the Basin of the Yellow River: Analysis Utilizing Population-Weighted Coefficient of Variation

Measuring the Construction Efficiency of Zero-Waste City Clusters Based on an Undesirable Super-Efficiency Model and Kernel Density Estimation Method

The global total amount of generated solid waste is currently on a rapid growth trend. China, as the largest developing country, promulgated its Pilot Work Plan for the Construction of Zero-Waste Cities led by the new development concept in 2018 after recognizing the inadequacy and urgency of solid waste management, and the lack of valuable experience and benchmark cities for the construction of zero-waste cities. This study uses the undesirable super-efficiency model and kernel density estimation method to measure the efficiency of zero-waste city construction in 16 prefecture-level cities in Shandong Province and analyze their spatial and temporal differences. Three major problems were found, namely, low regional coordination, the rigid policies of some local governments, and the unbalanced development of scale efficiency and pure technical efficiency. Results show that the zero-waste city construction efficiency as a whole shows a declining and then fluctuating growth trend, and that low-scale efficiency is the main reason behind the decrease in construction efficiency. Suggestions are then provided considering three aspects: improving regional synergy; improving government quality and capacity, and strengthening government supervision and revitalizing the market; and introducing social capital for environmental pollution treatment. These suggestions ultimately help improve the level of zero-waste city construction.

Assessment of Sustainable Development Suitability in Linear Cultural Heritage—A Case of Beijing Great Wall Cultural Belt

The Great Wall is an example of linear cultural Heritage (LCH) subjected to a fragile ecological environment and unbalanced economic development. However, no studies have been conducted to assess the sustainable development suitability (SDS) of the Great Wall region. Heritage area development assessments can increase public and government knowledge of the state of heritage areas and aid decision makers in formulating sensible policies or plans to protect and develop heritage areas. The valley is the spatial model of mountain economic development proposed on the basis of a basin combined with the ecological protection, rural development, and cultural inheritance present in mountainous areas. This study chose 169 valley units in the Beijing Great Wall Cultural Belt as research objects. A 15-indicator assessment index system was established based on the ecological, socio-economic, and cultural dimensions. The assessment procedure was enhanced by employing the triangle graphical method, and spatial autocorrelation was used to study the geographical distribution features of the development suitability scores derived from the research region. The results show the following facts: (1) Yanqing, Huairou, Miyun, Pinggu, and Changping have high development suitability results, whereas Mentougou and Changping have low scores. (2) In total, 96 valley units have practical advantages, and 51.5% are comprehensive development types (with advantages in at least two aspects). (3) Valley development suitability scores spatially cluster into seven high- and low-value groups. The ecological carrying capacity of the Badaling Cluster cannot maintain its overheated development. The results match up well with the objective condition of planning in the Beijing Great Wall National Cultural Park. We conclude that the proposed indicator framework and analytical method can be transferred to cases with similar contexts.

Research on the dynamic evolution and convergence of collaborative capacity of pollution control and carbon reduction: from the perspective of whole-process governance.

Under the strategic goals of achieving peak carbon neutrality, deepening the battle against pollution, and building a beautiful China, improving the collaborative capacity of pollution control and carbon reduction is an important means to achieve comprehensive green and low-carbon transformation of the social economy. Starting from the essential requirements of improving the collaborative capacity of pollution control and carbon reduction, based on the whole-process governance perspective of "source-process-end-of-pipe," build an evaluation index system, measure the collaborative capacity, quantify the spatial differences, analyze the evolution characteristics, and explore the improvement path. The study found that China's collaborative capacity of pollution control and carbon reduction is characterized by homogeneous agglomeration and unbalanced regional development. Intra-regional differences are the main source of the differences, sorting by contribution is "Eastern > Western > Central > Northeast." After taking into account the factors of green transformation of industry, the input of scientific and technological elements, and opening to the outside world, the differences have gradually narrowed. Among them, the green transformation of industry is instrumentally in bridging the gap in eastern, central, and northeastern, the input of scientific and technological elements is instrumentally in bridging the gap between regions and the eastern and northeast, and opening to the outside world is instrumentally in bridging the gap between regions and the western. The scientific measurement and improvement of this capacity will provide the factual basis and path choice for achieving the task goal of "significantly improving China's collaborative capacity of pollution control and carbon reduction by 2030," which is of great practical significance for building a higher-quality, more sustainable, and greener pattern of the collaborative capacity of pollution control and carbon reduction.

Research on Spatial–Temporal Characteristics and Driving Factors of Urban Development Intensity for Pearl River Delta Region Based on Geodetector

The Pearl River Delta (PRD) is one of the most dynamic economic regions in the Asia-Pacific region. At present, it still faces many problems, such as the over-exploitation of urban land and unbalanced development. Through the study of the spatial–temporal characteristics of the development intensity of the PRD region and its driving factors, the key points and difficulties of urban development can be intuitively found. In previous studies, geodetector was widely used to determine the impact of driving factors. This paper uses several different research methods, including the Moran index, the semi-variability index, hot and cold spots, etc., based on the land use data of the PRD region in 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2020 to analyze the spatial–temporal characteristics of the development intensity. Combined with the socio-economic data of the statistical yearbook, factor detection and interaction detection of the 10 driving factors of development intensity are carried out based on geodetector, and reasonable optimization suggestions are put forward for the current situation of the region. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) The overall development intensity of the PRD region shows an upward trend, showing a “core periphery” spatial pattern of high center and low periphery centered around the Pearl River estuary. (2) The spatial distribution of cold and hot spots shows agglomeration, mainly in the form of high aggregation and low aggregation. (3) The driving factors for the development intensity for the PRD region in the past 30 years mainly include population agglomeration level, industrial structure level, economic strength level, terrain slope, etc. Among them, any two factors have a stronger interaction than a single factor, and all are enhanced by two factors. The dominant factors of interaction in different periods are different.

Spatiotemporal Relationships between Ecosystem Health and Urbanization on the Tibetan Plateau from a Coupling Coordination Perspective

A complex relationship exists between natural environmental and urban systems. This study focuses on the province of Qinghai, which is a major part of the Tibetan Plateau. For the period 1995–2020, we explore the relationships between ecosystem health and urbanization. We established an indicator system for ecosystem health and urbanization and quantitatively analyzed the spatiotemporal pattern of coupling coordination between the two. It shows that between 1995 and 2020, the urbanization level in Qinghai showed a continuous upward trend, with the urbanization index in 2020 increasing by 147.20% compared to 1995. The level of ecosystem health also showed an upward trend, with the ecosystem health index (EHI) value in 2020 increasing by 3.31% compared to 1995. The coupling coordination degree between ecosystem health and urbanization in Qinghai increased year-on-year. Areas with high coupling coordination between ecosystem health and urbanization basically overlapped with areas with high urbanization, and the area gradually increased during the study period. Locations with slightly unbalanced development were located on the periphery of high coupling-coordination areas, and that area expanded in the years covered in this study. The low coupling-coordination areas were located in the northwest and southwest of Qinghai, bounded by the Qinghai-Tibet Highway. These results can support the evaluation of ecosystem health and urbanization on the Tibetan Plateau and high-altitude river source areas similar to Qinghai in China and elsewhere, contributing to sustainable land use policy.