| Generally speaking,development of Southwest China still falls behind and shows unbalanced patterns among its counties.Southwest China covers 11.6% of the land in China but merely contributes to 9.47% of the GDP of the country.Complex geographic features have led to scattered inhabitants,low degree of marketization and urbanization in this area.In2016,urbanization ratio in this area is 49.1% which is about 8% less than the national level(57.35%)and much less than the number of eastern areas in China.Meanwhile,transportation infrastructures in southwestern areas have been poorly constructed since long time ago.As an old poem says,“roads in Sichuan Province are way less accessible than going up to the heaven”.Recently,Development of the Western Regions,the Belt and Road,the Yangtze River Economic Zone,Targeted Poverty Alleviation and many other policies again draw the attention of the public about the development issues of Southwest China.Southwest China has been provided beneficial policy and financial support since the government took targeted measures to help people lift themselves out of poverty.County-level economy in the southwest gets promising potential but still falls behind the average standard,especially in contrast to its eastern counterpart.County-level economy occupies crucial position in the national economy,which acts as bridges between cities and villages as well as connections among all kinds of industries.County-level economy has been considered an important part of the China’s economic system reform since it was set the national strategy in the report of the 16 th national congress of the CPC.Transportation networks and urbanization are important approaches to the development of county-level economy growth in the southwest.Not only does traffic directly improves the economy growth but also it forms traffic networks altering the urban system and relative positions of the prefectures to affect the economy.National New Urbanization Planning(2014-2020)also emphasizes the crucial role of urbanization in the economic growth.Southwest China is now in demand of urbanization to accelerate its regional development.Upon the backgrounds,this dissertation takes 436 sample counties to analyze county-level economic growth issues in Southwest China.Methods such as spatial econometric,social network analysis and spatial exploring as well as theories like spatial structure,spatial correlation,economic growth,spatial distribution and coupling are applied tothis dissertation.Spatial agglomeration,heterogeneity features,impacts of transportation and urbanization are discussed to propose suggestions to the development of the southwestern areas.First,it illustrates the analyzing framework of spatially transportation networks,urbanization and economic growth based on “flow of space” and spatial network theory.Second,spatially distribution and coupling features are discussed in combination with the status quo of transportation networks,urbanization and county-level economic growth.Third,empirical tests are carried out to evaluate the agglomeration and heterogenicity features of county-level economic growth in the southwestern areas.It includes chapters as below:The first chapter is the introduction of the research background,the logic,the definition of the main concepts,the methods,the description of main contents,possible marginal contributes and limits.The second chapter contains theory and literature review of classic theories and research tendencies from both home and abroad.Two main parts are included in this chapter: one is to review the “flow of the space” theory,urbanization theory,county-level economy theory and New Geographic economy theory and models;the other part sets the foundation of the mechanism constructed in this dissertation based on literatures of transportation networks,urbanization and county-level economy growth.The third chapter is the mechanism.Early economic geography theories shed light on spatial correlations of economic phenomenon.Transportation networks analysis provides refreshed approach and solution to explain complicated spatial relationships.Urbanization is a crucial strategy to boost economic growth in Southwest China.A theory model is derived from production function according to the “transportation networks-urbanization-economic growth” logic chain.This model helps to illustrate the mechanism of the effects of transportation networks on economic growth and county-level structure.The fourth chapter is about the status quo and spatial structure evolution of Southwest China,revealing its spatial distribution and coupling correlations of transportation networks,urbanization and county-level economy.First,the analysis of transportation networks,urbanization and county-level economy.Second,this chapter discusses spatial structure and distribution through featured ellipse and coupling characteristics.The fifth chapter focuses on economic spillover effects of the southwest regions,especially the agglomeration of impoverished counties with transportation network weight.Significant spatial correlation remains in the economic development in Southwest China.The dissertation applies Space Durbin Model(SDM)to analyze panel data of 436 counties from2007 to 2016.Spillover effects are calculated and compared among closeness weight,distance weight and transportation network weight.The sixth chapter is an extension of the fifth to explore spatial heterogeneity characteristics of different impacts imposed by transportation networks or urbanization.This chapter analyzes heterogenicity,influential factors and evolution patterns using Geographical Weighting Regression(GWR)and GIS visualization.It specially focuses on the development of six aggregated poor-areas and shows visualized results through GIS.Conclusions and suggestions are drawn in the seventh chapter.Four main conclusions are drawn through theoretically mechanism deduction and empirical analysis:First,A “transportation networks-urbanization-economic growth” mechanism works under “flow of space” theory.This dissertation holds that regions interact with each other in the “flow of space” and transportation networks are the main carriers of the interaction.Formula derivation suggests that(1)an inverted U type relationship exists between urbanization and economy when urbanization affected by transportation networks and urbanization in other counties;(2)A geographic function related to distance and network coefficient illustrates urbanization impact on other counties;(3)The impacts of network coefficient shows progressive index features.Second,featured ellipse and coupling analysis show that there is spatial coupling in the logic chain: positive correlation remains among density of transportation networks,coupling and urbanization ratio.The featured ellipses of transportation networks,urbanization and county-level economy overlaps a lot and exhibit similar characteristics.Counties attain higher development level mainly distribute inside the ellipse and vice versa.Third,SDM Model illustrates significant spatial spillover effects of transportation networks and urbanization in Southwest China.Transportation networks in Southwest China impose negative effects on its county-level economic growth.There is an inverted U type relationship between urbanization and economic growth.Labor investment,industrial structure and government intervene are also factors to improve the economic growth in the southwestern areas in China.Fourth,GWR Model reveals the heterogenicity features of inter-regional economic impacts in the southwestern areas.Based on the conclusions,the chapter suggests measures such as transportation networks,urbanization,multicenter growth pole,targeted poverty alleviation and coordinated inter-regional development.There are three potential marginal contributions in this dissertation.First,starting from“space of flow” theory,an analyzing framework of “transportation networks-urbanizationeconomic growth” is constructed.Theoretical and quantitative relations of the framework are derived.Second,based on complex network analysis theory and social network analysis method,this dissertation applies spatial weight to the Southwest China transportation networks to estimates the spillover effects of county-level economy.Third,Space Durbin Model and Geographical Weighting Regression Model are used to test the mechanism established in this dissertation and show reversed U shape relation between urbanization and county-level economic growth,which is affected by transportation networks. |
