Study On The Evolution Of Regional Economic Networks And Its Economic Growth Effects In China

China is in a critical period of economic development transformation,regional spatial linkages and interactions are strengthening,regional economic spatial structure is gradually changing from point-axis-driven to network-driven,and the regional economic network becomes the main form of regional linkages,reflecting new changes of the regional economy in different sizes,scales,levels,and dimensions.Therefore,responding to the new trend of regional economic spatial structure changes,further optimizing the spatial organization pattern of the regional economic network,and promoting efficient and smooth interconnection among various regions has become urgent task to crack the problem of unbalanced and insufficient regional development.In the context of China’s new development stage and new development pattern,it is of great theoretical and practical significance to explore what characteristics regional economic network evolutionary trends have,what impact they have on economic growth and through which mechanisms,and to propose policies to optimize regional economic spatial development pattern and network-driven economic growth paths for the high-quality and coordinated development of China’s regional economy.This thesis follows the research line of "research foundation → theoretical analysis →current situation analysis→empirical test→mechanism analysis→conclusion and prospect" to carry out research on the evolution and its economic growth effects of regional economic networks in China.In the research foundation section,this thesis systematically summarizes the basic theories of regional economic growth,regional economic networks and agglomeration economies at home and abroad,defines the core concepts of regional economic growth and regional economic networks,and reviews the research literature on regional economic network description measurement,evolution mechanism and the effects on regional economic growth.In the theoretical analysis section,with reference to endogenous growth theory,agglomeration and network externality theory,the endogenous growth model including knowledge spillover and environmental pollution is constructed under the framework of new economic geography,and mathematical model analysis is used to explore the theoretical relationship between regional economic networks and economic growth.In the current situation analysis section,regional economic networks are characterized and measured in terms of regional knowledge spillover networks(implicit)and transaction cost networks(explicit).The overall evolutionary characteristics,spatial evolutionary characteristics and community evolutionary characteristics of China’s regional economic networks are revealed.The regional economic network evolutionary mechanism from a multidimensional proximity perspective is analyzed.In the empirical test section,the methods of kernel density,standard deviation ellipse,spatial autocorrelation and regional difference decomposition are used to reveal the dynamic distribution,spatio-temporal patterns and regional differences of regional economic growth in China.And based on panel data of Chinese cities above prefecture level from 2011 to 2019,spatial econometric models,regression by groups and interaction term models are used to empirically test the effects of local knowledge spillover,cross-regional knowledge spillover and trade freedom on economic growth.Their heterogeneity characteristics in terms of location conditions,size grades and environmental pollution levels are revealed.In the mechanism analysis section,spatial econometric models,interaction term models,panel threshold models,and panel spatial threshold models are used to reveal the mechanism paths of the impact of regional economic networks on economic growth in terms of agglomeration effects,environmental pollution effects,and efficiency promotion effects.In the conclusion and prospects section,the main conclusions,policy recommendations,shortcomings and prospects of this thesis are included.The main research findings of this thesis are as follows:First,the density of China’s regional economic network gradually increases,the linkage paths are shortened,the tendency of clustering into groups is obvious,tending to be polycentric,showing a typical power-law distribution and scale-free characteristics.The spatial evolution pattern of China’s regional economic network has significant spatial directionality,and the highlevel areas of node centrality is mainly distributed on the east side of the "Hu Line",with Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei,Yangtze River Delta,Pearl River Delta and Chengdu-Chongqing urban agglomerations as the core of the most closely connected rhombus structure,forming a regional economic network evolution pattern with urban agglomerations as the backbone and regional central cities as the fulcrum.China’s regional economic network shows obvious characteristics of community evolution,gradually evolving from the "three major communities" with BeijingTianjin-Hebei,Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta as the core clusters and the "two minor communities" with Xi’an and Zhengzhou as the cores to a stable new pattern with Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei,Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta and Chengdu-Chongqing as the cores.In addition,geographical proximity,economic proximity,social proximity,organizational proximity,and institutional proximity all contribute positively to the evolution of regional economic networks.Second,the level of China’s regional economic growth has steadily increased,with the absolute difference expanding and the relative difference narrowing.The center of gravity of China’s regional economic growth has gradually shifted from the northeast to the southwest,and a spatial pattern has generally formed with several urban agglomerations as the core and the expansion of radiation with points,while there is an obvious trend of spatial agglomeration,with high-high cluster and low-low cluster coexisting.There are regional differences in China’s regional economic growth,manifested by the highest average level and the largest absolute difference in the eastern region China,the largest relative difference and obvious decreasing trend in the western region China.The overall decreasing trend in the intergroup differences,only the difference between the eastern and northeastern region China gradually increases,and the intergroup differences gradually replace the super-variable density,becoming the main reason for the spatial imbalance of China’s regional economic growth.Third,regional economic networks affect economic growth mainly through local knowledge spillover,cross-regional knowledge spillover and trade freedom.Local and crossregional knowledge spillovers have a positive effect on economic growth,and the increase of trade freedom promotes economic growth with an "N"-shaped non-linear characteristic of strengthened firstly,then weakened and then strengthened again.From the viewpoint of heterogeneity of location conditions,size grades and environmental pollution levels,the local and cross-regional knowledge spillovers of cities with better location conditions promote economic growth,and the marginal promotion effect of trade freedom in cities with worse location conditions promotes economic growth is greater.The local knowledge spillovers from large cities have a greater contribution to economic growth,and the cross-regional knowledge spillovers of small and medium-sized cities have more significant effects on economic growth,and the increase of trade freedom can promote economic growth from large cities.The promotion effect of local knowledge spillover on economic growth is greater in low-pollution cities,the economic growth effect of cross-regional knowledge spillover is stronger in highpollution cities,and there are positive promotion effect and spatial spillover effect of trade freedom on economic growth in low-pollution cities.Fourth,local knowledge spillover can significantly promote specialization agglomeration and economic agglomeration,and suppress diversification agglomeration.Cross-regional knowledge spillover can significantly suppress specialization agglomeration,and promote diversification agglomeration and economic agglomeration.There is a significant inverse "N" non-linear relationship between trade freedom and specialization agglomeration and economic agglomeration,while a significant ’N’ non-linear relationship with diversification agglomeration.The environmental pollution has a negative moderating effect in the effects of local knowledge spillover and trade freedom on economic growth.With the increase of environmental pollution level,the effects of local and cross-regional knowledge spillover and trade freedom on economic growth are weakening,and there are certain threshold characteristics.Efficiency enhancement effect is an important path for regional economic networks to influence economic growth,and local and cross-regional knowledge spillovers can promote economic growth by enhancing the level of information technology,technological innovation level,green technological innovation level and green innovation efficiency.Fifth,this thesis puts forward policy recommendations on enhancing multidimensional proximity,improving the centrality of nodes and linkages strength of regional knowledge spillover networks,enhancing inter-regional trade freedom and promoting the development of regional economic integration around the mechanism of multidimensional proximity,the effect and mechanism paths of regional economic network evolution on economic growth.