With the rise and the turn of “everyday life” study in Western Academia, “going back to the world of everyday practice” and the ontology of life become the new academic perspective. The major conflict in Chinese society triggers the shift of the relations between people and place - from a static and homogenous to a more dynamic and heterogeneous interaction. “People” and “place” is endowed with the connotation and extension of everyday life. In the new era of pursuing a better life, geographers need to find out the geographical characteristics of everyday life practice, and how different subjects exhibit the dynamic relations between people and place, people and people, people and self through everyday practice and leisure; at the same time, they have to concentrate on the life practice and place meaning in different geographical scales. This special issue focuses on the subjective initiative of everyday life and leisure, spatial heterogeneity and the complexities between people and place. Specifically, the article discusses the relations between the leisure the well-being of the residents, between the evaluation of dynamics of urban public space and the ways of leisure, and between the sense of place and the settlement intentions. Future work should firstly focus on the everyday life and the leisure of marginal population. Secondly, there is a lack of study of everyday life practice on the “rural” scale, the study of rural population can be a complement for the research of rules and mechanisms of the everyday life and the leisure. Last but not least, we hope this special issue can be a good start to the promotion of constructing the theoretical debates of everyday life geography in China, meanwhile, a contribution to the geographical wisdom on how to pursue a beautiful life in practice in this new era.

With the development of social economy, leisure behavior of urban residents is changing. It is necessary to discuss the issue on urban residents’ leisure and well-being in modern China. Previous studies have explored the relationship between leisure and subject well-being from the perspectives of leisure participation and leisure satisfaction, but discussions on the mechanism between leisure and well-being have not reached a consensus conclusion, and should be further investigated. Leisure activities will inevitably involve leisure time and leisure space, however, most of the existing literature overlooked the influence of the objective factors. This paper expands the study of leisure and subjective well-being with the dimensions of time and space by establishing a structural equation model of “leisure and well-being”. Based on the structural equation model, this study analyzes the impacts of leisure time, leisure space, leisure participation and leisure satisfaction on the subjective well-being, by using the data of questionnaire survey in Guangzhou. The results show that both leisure participation and leisure satisfaction have significantly positive impacts on subjective well-being, which verifies both the activity theory and the need theory. Compared with leisure participation, leisure satisfaction has a greater impact on subjective well-being with a coefficient of 0.394. The results also show that both leisure time and leisure space are exogenous and have positive effects on leisure participation. More concentrated time and less time pressure will significantly improve leisure satisfaction and promote subjective well-being. Leisure space, including leisure places, facilities, environment and atmosphere are also important in leisure activities; however, leisure space does not show any direct impacts, but only indirect impacts on subjective well-being through leisure participation and leisure satisfaction. Thus, leisure participation and leisure satisfaction play intermediary roles in the relationship between leisure and well-being. The findings have important implications for promoting urban residents’ leisure behaviors and subjective well-being. First, considering the importance of leisure time, the government should implement the paid vacation system to improve leisure quality and subjective well-being of urban residents. Second, leisure space is greatly affected by the local culture and the unique characteristics of a city, and local government should emphasize its own leisure culture to enhance residents’ leisure participation. Last but not least, leisure is not equal to well-being, but can meet the individual’s needs in psychological, physical, social, aesthetic and other aspects. Thus, leisure industry should be further developed to improve residents’ leisure satisfaction and subjective well-being.

As a key concept that describes human-place relationships, "sense of place" has long been an area of focus of international geographers. Studies on sense of place are currently either based on phenomenology and existentialism, with emphasis on describing the human experience of space and place, or on quantitative psychology and various dimensions of sense of place. With the former approach, researchers focus on the relationship between people and relatively familiar places, whereas with the latter, researchers focus on the relationship between people and unfamiliar places. Based on phenomenology, we explored sense of place in urban public leisure spaces, taking Guangzhou Tianhe Sports Center as an example. We used the concept of "place-ballet" and six features developed by David Seamon, namely, attraction, diversity, comfortableness, invitation, distinctiveness, and attachment, as key factors that generate sense of place. Research suggests that the first five features correspond to the five ways people and places interact, whereas attachment is a more emotional feeling, that is, a sense of place generated from the five types of association. We classified the human-place relationship of the above public leisure space into three categories by extent of human-place closeness: (1) "Daily association", whereby people used the sports center at relatively frequent intervals (e.g., every day or week) to engage in leisure activities, in particular physical exercise, thus forming a direct and close-use relationship with the space and facilities; (2) "Periodic association", whereby people visited the sports center for specific events (e.g., Guangzhou Evergrande football match or annual Spring Flower Market), thus forming a direct but loose-use relationship with the space and facilities; and (3) "Contextual association", whereby people had no direct-use relationship with the place but had witnessed or participated in a certain stage of the developmental history of the sports center over a sufficiently long period. Of these three human-place relationships, contextual association exceeds the explanation boundary of the "place-ballet" concept. Hence, we introduced two theoretical propositions for further exploration. The "human-place whole" and "human-place association" concepts can substitute the concept of "place whole" employed in previous human geographical research. In terms of actual research needs, the "human-place association" concept, which can direct specific observation practices and describe experiences, is more important than the "human-place whole" concept. Current mainstream research on sense of place (including place attachment) is only a partial research based on psychology. In addition, sense of place can be studied as a whole for various human-place associations, and as basic research that is close to philosophical level and fully incorporates human-place relationships by ensuring descriptive and interpretive applications. Overall, our classification and discussion of the categories of human-place relationships in special areas, such as urban public leisure spaces, include explicitly empirical observations, general facts, and unified dimensional standards. They are not only applicable for studying human-place relationship phenomena in leisure spaces but can also provide a valuable reference for studying such phenomena in other special urban spaces.

The vitality of public space is an important indicator of urban quality, as urban public space is important for people to attain positive experiences from public life and social interactions. Measuring the vitality of public space faces challenges, because the vitality is a multi-dimensional and nebulous concept. Meanwhile existing approaches often focus on the scale of activity to indicate vitality but lack of a comprehensive assessment of vitality. To overcome this problem this paper aims to address this research gap by proposing a multi-dimensional framework for a holistic evaluation of the vitality of public space. Three aspects are identified, based on theories about the vitality of public space, as critical to assessing the vitality of public space, which include individual behavior, spatial activities, and spatial interaction networks. Accordingly, three measurements, including the ratio of tourists’ revisit, the degree of mixed activities, and the centrality of network interactions are proposed. Using the proposed measurements, a case study in the city of Nanjing was carried out. The vitality of 42 parks in the center city, as examples of public space, was evaluated. To measure tourists’ activities, a dataset of two weeks’ anonymous mobile phone signal records during the March 2018 was used. The results showed that the vitalities of parks are high overall, while there are significant differences among different types of parks. In particular, parks with more comprehensive functionalities tend to show higher scores of vitalities, and parks providing one or a few specific functionalities have lower vitality and the neighborhood parks are the lowest in vitality. Moreover, the three measurements indicate variety vitality of parks. For instance, the ratios of tourists’ revisit vary greatly among parks. The degree of mixed activities, in contrary, presents a cluster pattern in which most parks gained high scores. The centrality of network interactions also varies considerably among parks. A core network of parks was observed, which is composed of 22 parks such as Xuanwu Lake, Meihuashan, and Luboyuan. From a methodological perspective, an evaluation framework proposed in this study allows us to comprehensively understand and to quantitatively measure different constructs of the vitality. The measurements also provide useful insights into the design and planning of public space, as planners could optimize public space and improve the vitality based on the evaluation results. Through the higher resolution activity data, this analysis framework can be applied to analyze the vitality of small-scale space accurately, and combined with other information, such as tourists’ property and space facility, to further explore the influencing factors of space vitality.

Public space is a key arena for the unfolding of social interactions and cultural practices in cities. In the context of the modern city, the relationships between public space and its civic culture occupy an important place in theoretical debates. The primary context for such debates is the fact that modern cities are inhabited largely by strangers who are not acquainted with each other, and traditional communal and kinship ties have largely dissolved in the modern metropolis. In this context, public space is believed to be key to negotiations with strangers and the anonymous nature of social relations in cities. One theoretical perspective argues that ad hoc interactions and encounters in public space motivate urban people to recognise what roles they can play vis-à-vis strangers, and eventually realise that there is a separate realm of social relations and interactions beyond the cosiness of the private. A second perspective maintains that everyday life in public space can be seen as the transgression of the discipline of capitalist economy and market transactions. This article asks whether theoretical perspectives emerging from Western urban contexts are relevant to Chinese urban contexts in the reform era, and what kind of publicness has been constituted by social lives and cultural practices in Chinese cities. It focuses on square dance, a specific form of collective public leisure which has enjoyed remarkable media exposure in China over the recent years. Using data-mining techniques based on the Python programming language, this research systematically collected online public discourses on public space over the period of 2011-2015. This dataset is then analysed with the method of natural language processing. Overall, this article argues that publicness in reform-era urban China is comparable to Western cities in the sense that public space is heavily used for the purposes of social interactions and cultural expressions, while the right to public space is widely recognised by urban people, public discourses and the state. However, publicness performed in square dance is also distinctive in two ways. First, while public vibrancy is emphasised in the West for its contribution to the recognition of diversity and difference, the same is not so much underscored in the Chinese context as the aspiration for collectivism and collective social life. Practices of re-collectivization at a micro-level do not alter the general trend towards a “society of strangers”, but rather negotiate broader social changes. Second, while the existence of an urban public realm is widely recognised in the West and underscored by widely shared norms and codes of conduct, the notion of urban public is still vague for Chinese urbanites, and is instead an ongoing process of learning and negotiation about how to be public in an emerging Chinese urbanism.

Impact of built environment on older adults’ health has become a hot topic in aging geography research field. As a kind of subjective perception, well-being is influenced much by environment factors. However, bias exists when built environment’s impact on well-being is analysed only under the context of residential neighbourhood. According to the theory of uncertain geographic context problem, the built environment in daily activity space also affects individual’s well-being, not only environment around neighbourhood. For further understanding of the relationship of built environment and well-being, the article discusses the spatial temporal pattern of older people’s daily activity and the characteristic of built environment in different geographic contexts using 2016 survey of Guangzhou older adults. It is indicated that daily trajectories differ among older adults in different health statuses. What’s more, the environment they exposed are totally different as well. Therefore, Logistic regression model is used to analyse different health effects of built environment under separating geographic contexts. It is indicated that built environment affects well-being under all kinds of the geographic contexts, while the built environment of residential neighbourhood and daily activity space influences well-being to the largest extent. Besides, built environment factors in the place of maintenance activity and the place of recreation activity daily activity space have relation with well-being as well. To be more specific, the health effect of built environment like the density of bus stops, the density of green space and the density of intersections varies with geography contexts due to different activity durations, frequencies and purposes under different geographic contexts. The research verifies that built environment influences well-being not only in residential neighbourhood and reveals that geographic context difference exists while we analyse the health effect of built environment. What’s more, the relationship of built environment factors and older adults’ well-being under different geography contexts is also summarized. The conclusion supplements the research of spatial temporal behaviour from the perspective of daily activity and helps to enhance the understanding of built environment’s health effect. It offers a scientific support to the construction of aging liveable city and the provision of active aging health service.

Entering the “New Era”, along with the promotion of China’s new-type urbaniza-tion, the meaning of “people-centered urbanization” has become more and more important. How to integrate and citizenize (shiminhua) migrants in Chinese cities is increasingly becoming a significant policy issue. Extensive empirical studies have been carried out on migrants’ settlement intention in Chinese cities. However, many studies focused on the institutional barrier created by rural-urban dichotomy, while little attention has been given to the impacts of the current trend of “family migration” on migrants’ settlement intention. Particularly, little research on this topic has been done in the small and medium-sized cities. Existing studies found that migrants in different cities have distinct levels of settlement intention, local contexts matter. As such, this paper uses Wenzhou as a case study, to explore the influence of family migration on migrants’ settlement intention. The research shows that migrants in Wenzhou did not have a very strong settlement intention. Results from logistic regression models reveal that hukou status has no significant effect on migrants’ settlement intention, while individual’s occupation, stability of work and family migration have significant impacts on migrants’ settlement intention. We argue that individual’s socioeconomic characteristics, instead of intuitional barriers, have become increasingly important for migrants’ settlement. Furthermore, the paper points out that it is necessary to emphasize the differences between large cities and medium-sized cities in the mechanism underlying migrants’ settlement intention. The existing studies in large cities have found that migrants’ intention to stay in the city is largely for maximizing their income. However, our study indicates that migrants’ settlement intention in medium-sized cities is not only determined by income, but more importantly by family factors. Migrants with a whole family in the city tend to have higher settlement intention than couple and single migrants do. We suggest that to have a whole family in the city would effectively lift migrants’ willingness to settle down. Therefore, in the background of new-type urbanization and civilization of agricultural population, small and medium-sized cities should seize the opportunity to attract talents by considering family-oriented policy design, which would help stimulate migrants’ willingness to settle down and also enhance their settlement capacity, and finally achieve "people-oriented urbanization".

As the basic system of national spatial development and protection in China, the spatial structure of the major function zoning in China is an important constrain index for various levels of spatial planning and the key parameters for the precise landing of the major function zoning. In this paper, the planar function zones are brought into the structure of the point-axis system, and the scientific connotation of the point-axis structure of the major function zones is explored. This study aims to explore the major function zoning of China at the national and provincial levels from three aspects: the elements of the point-axis structure of the major function zones, the spatial differentiation between the function zones and the point-axis structure and the interaction between the function zones and the point-axis structure. The results show that: (1) the map of major function zoning in China contains the point-axis system structure. The urbanization zones is a collection of polar cores of different grades and the development axis is determined by the level and spatial distribution of polar cores; (2) the point-axis region development system, the agricultural development and ecological security zones show the characteristic of layer structure, the farther away the axis is, the lower the proportion of urbanization zones is and the higher the proportion of ecological security zones is, and the point-axis structure is constrained by the demand of food security and ecological security; (3) whether at the national or provincial levels, the most closely connected regional linkages is basically consistent with the development axis, and the interaction between the dominant regions with higher level of urbanization function in different levels determines the topological structure of the point-axis of the major function zones, which is more obvious in the region with the weak natural constraints and the relatively strong human activities. The results of this paper are helpful to scientifically cognize the scientific connotation and spatial organization law of the major function zoning, and provide the key indexes and parameters for the spatial planning and downscaling landing of the major function zones and also provide an important reference for the comprehensive geographical regionalization of China.

Mega-city regions have emerged as the main spatial form of China's new urbaniza-tion strategy, and become the basic spatial units of participating in global and regional competition for China. However, mega-city regions are not equally capable of boosting regional economic development due to different levels of development. Therefore, this paper adopts the concept of competitiveness, as both theoretical framework and empirical model, to evaluate the development status of China’s mega-city regions. This paper firstly reviews the definition of China’s mega-city regions, the concept of competitiveness of mega-city regions and the methodology to evaluate the competitiveness of mega-city regions. Based on the review of related literatures, this paper proposes a multi-tier evaluation system to calculate the competitiveness of 13 mega city-regions of China. The chosen indicators come from the five perspectives of economic development, human resource, infrastructural accessibility, integration into global economy and capacity of scientific and technological innovation. The result shows that there are great disparities and regional inequality in competitiveness across different mega city-regions. Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan are the first-tier mega city-regions with the highest level of comprehensive competitiveness and have significant global influence as well. Chengdu-Chongqing, Shandong peninsula, South-central Liaoning and Wuhan belong to the second-tier mega city-regions that shows partial advantages and has significant regional influence. Southeast Fujian, Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan, Central Plains and Central Shaanxi Plain belong to the third-tier mega-city regions. Harbin-Daqing-Qiqihar and Changchun-Jilin belong to the fourth-tier mega-city regions. The third and fourth tiers of mega-city regions have relatively weak competitiveness. Aside from disparities in competitiveness, regional inequalities exist for the uneven distribution of high-weight indicators that consist of the core competitiveness. In general, core competitiveness consists of the advanced productive factors such as the ability of scientific and technological innovation, integration into global economy and capacity of capital agglomeration. The differences of the core competitiveness between coastal and inland mega-city regions are the main manifestation of regional inequalities. Due to the highly unbalanced distribution of the advanced productive factors among the eastern, central and western regions, the regional inequalities of China will probably exist for a long time.

Population migration, social check-in, vehicle navigation, and other spatial behavior big data have become vital carriers characterizing users' spatial behavior. The big data used in this paper were collected from the locations provided by hundreds of millions intelligent mobile phone users through Location Based Service (LBS) Tencent Migration data platform, and were displayed by means of real-time heat map which indicates user’s moving trajectory in China. "Tencent Migration" big data can real-timely, dynamically, completely and systematically record population flow routes using LBS device. Through gathering residents daily mobility among 299 cities in China during the period of "National Day-Mid-Autumn Festival" (NDMAF) vacation (from September 30 to October 8) in 2017 in "Tencent Migration" and defining three periods with "travel period, journey period, return period", this paper is designed to analyze and explore the characteristics and spatial patterns of daily flow mobility cities from the perspective of population daily mobility distribution levels, flow distribution layers network aggregation, spatial patterns and characteristics of the complex structure of the flow network. Results show that "Tencent migration" big data clearly discovers the temporal-spatial pattern of population mobility in China during the period of NDMAF. The net inflow of population showed a diamond-shaped pattern with cross frame support in each period, with the four nodes of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Xi’an. Main mobility assembling centers are distributed in the urban agglomerations of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and Chengdu-Chongqing, and those centers have strong coherence with those urban hierarchies. There is a positive correlation between the level of urban administration and the influence of population flow. Most cities are in a state of "relative equilibrium" in the population flow, and clear hierarchical structure and level distinction can be identified. Spatial patterns of population mobility present obvious core-periphery structures. The Dali-Hegang line exhibits a significant network of spatial differences in terms of boundary divisions. In this context, the spatial distribution of urban network could be summarized as "dense in the East and sparse in the West", and the core linkages of urban network could be characterized as "parallel in the East and series in the West". The whole network exhibits a typical "small world" network characteristic, which shows that China's urban population flow network has high connectivity and accessibility during the period of NDMAF. The network has a distinct "community" structure in the local area, including 2 national communities, 2 regional communities and 3 local-level communities.

Regional resilience is the regional capability of a region to cope with the short- and long-term changes in the development process and to actively adjust and transform itself, which represents the adaptability, innovation and sustainability of the region. As a new concept, regional resilience reflects the new requirements of geographical research on sustainable development and regional studies. A relational-dynamic perspective as a new perspective and a new cognitive method of geographical analysis is introduced in this paper towards an understanding of the complexity of regional resilience. In accordance with the concept of contextuality, path dependence and contingency in Western economic geography as well as the multi-perspectival turns of economic geography during the past decades such as the relational turn, the institutional turn, the cultural turn and the evolutionary turn, the relational-dynamic perspective advocates a comprehensive recognition of the complex process of spatial evolution based on multi-dimensionality, which brings new thinking and new methods of regional resilience cognition. This study attempts to grasp the complexity of regional resilience analytically. It examines the latest findings of the international research progresses in the identification and evaluation of regional resilience in geographical sciences. Based on a relational-dynamic perspective, this study explores the construction of a cognitive framework of regional resilience, summarizes the methodology of the analyses on regional resilience with emphases on both context analysis and process analysis, and attempts to establish an assessment equation to evaluate regional resilience from the economic, social, environmental and institutional dimensions. By analyzing the generality and particularity of the research on regional resilience in China, this study tries to link the theoretical research on regional resilience to the practical Chinese issues in order to make a theoretical contribution to the regional resilience research, to promote the transdisciplinary discussion with knowledge integration and academic discussion of the research on regional resilience, regional development studies and relative cognitive fields in geographical sciences, and thus to provide scientific guidance for national and reginal sustainable development with decision-making reference to relative policies for the governments. It offers a new perspective for regional planners, scientists and policy makers to facilitate regional governance from an interdisciplinary and relational-dynamic perspective based on a resilience-based spatial cognition.

Central Asia plays a crucial role in the Belt and Road Initiative, serving as a bridge between China and Europe. In geopolitical terms, it is a high valued region that provides new strategic opportunities to China when the U.S. withdraws from Afghanistan and Russia is relatively declining. In order to promote China-Central Asia cooperation, a strategic pivot is urgently needed. There is a growing number of studies on the selection and spatial distribution of strategic pivots under the Belt and Road Initiative, nevertheless, most studies fall short of a scrutiny of pivots at lower scales. Instead, the pivots are mostly geopolitical units at the national scale, e.g. Kazakhstan or Pakistan. Also, a qualitative approach is widely used by scholars while the quantitative methods are largely overlooked. The results and approaches of current researches could not be perfectly applied to the analysis of Central Asia, as the so-called “pivots” are relatively broad and unclear for the cooperation in this region, which needs a pivot at regional or even urban scale. Therefore, this paper aims to discuss the selection and spatial structure evolution of the regional scale strategic pivot of China-Central Asia cooperation by evaluating a variety of spatial objects, e.g. cities, frontier ports and transport infrastructure. The results can be summarized as follows. (1) Based on the evaluation and clustering analysis, 15 Chinese cities, 10 Central Asian cities and 4 frontier ports can be extracted from major cities and ports in China and Central Asia. The most significant nodes include Urumqi, Ili, Almaty, Bishkek, Tashkent, Horgos, etc. (2) Based on the accessibility to the China-Central Asia boundary, the nodes are further refined, in which Urumqi, Ili, Almaty and Bishkek are major cities within the 12 h isochronous rings. Also, the results of overall accessibility and city networks suggest a curved valley stretching from Urumqi to East Turkmenistan, covering major cities in Southeastern Central Asia. (3) Based on the results, the “Urumqi-Almaty Economic Corridor” can be constructed as the regional pivot of China-Central Asia cooperation. The spatial structure of the pivot can be designed as “two cores, four axes, and two belts”. Accordingly, the construction of the corridor should focus mostly on the development of frontier ports, transportation infrastructures and cities in the core area.

The world first-class universities can continuously provide innovative talents, generate new knowledge and generate new businesses for the public, and have become the focus of global attention. The R&D intensive enterprises mean more investment in R&D, greater R&D strength, technology and innovation as the fundamental, realize its sustained and rapid development of enterprises, and the spatial distribution of R&D intensive enterprises is the microcosmic basis for understanding the regional economic transformation. This paper is based on the microcosmic data of world first-class universities and R&D intensive enterprises, by using vector data notation, kernel density estimation combined with the negative two regression model, taking the United States as an example, to study the influence mechanism of spatial agglomeration of world first-class universities on R&D intensive enterprises' spatial layout. The results shows that: (1) The world first-class universities and R&D intensive enterprises highly concentrated area mainly include the northeast coastal metropolitan zone, the Chicago metropolitan area, the Silicon Valley area and the Los Angeles metropolitan area, which present a high degree of agglomeration and spatial matching in the USA. (2) The software and computer services R&D enterprises are mainly concentrated in Silicon Valley, New York and Miami, the technology hardware and equipment R&D enterprises mainly concentrated in Silicon Valley, Los Angeles and New York; the pharmaceutical and biotechnology R&D enterprises mainly concentrated in Silicon Valley and New York; the health care equipment and R&D enterprises mainly concentrated in Silicon Valley and Boston, and R&D intensive enterprises prefer to choose the world first-rate subject space agglomeration area related to their own R&D field in the USA. (3) The high value hot spots in the first-class universities and R&D intensive enterprises are concentrated in the Silicon Valley area, showing a semicircular radiation pattern, and the higher value hot spots are mainly distributed in the northeast coastal metropolitan zone, showing the band radiation. (4) In order to seek innovative resource endowment, acquire knowledge spillover economy, share innovation infrastructure, reduce technology transfer cost, and get the advantage of innovation cluster, R&D intensive enterprises choose the first-class university agglomeration area for spatial layout.

With the integration of global economy being strengthened constantly and the value chain being disassemble rapidly, innovation resources such as talent, technology, information flow are recombined fast worldwide. With the booming development of multinational R&D investment, the model of international foreign investment has hanged significantly. While China has long been a host country of MNCs overseas R&D investment, Chinese MNCs have increasingly invested their R&D overseas. This paper investigates how Chinese companies, as latecomers in R&D globalization, have strategically determined the locations for their R&D investment. Using the data of overseas R&D investment of Chinese enterprises from 1998- 2015 and zero tail negative binomial regression analysis, it first describes the spatio-temporal pattern, then examines the factors affecting location decision of Chinese R&D investment. It found that the number of oversea R&D institutions of Chinese companies has grown rapidly during the study period. Moreover, while most of Chinese oversea R&D institutions are located in developed countries, they are widely distributed and have the trends of both concentration and dispersion. For example, Huawei has concentrated about 2/3 of its overseas R&D institutions in Europe and scattered the rest in Asia, America and Africa, due to its strategy that the R&D institutes shall first meet local, then regional and global markets and the strategic consideration of Europe as an important region for more basic R&D research. The zero tail negative binomial regression analysis reveals main country-level factors determining the overseas R&D investment of Chinese companies, as illustrated by the following findings: (1) R&D demands of host countries are not the key factors that attract R&D investment of Chinese companies. (2) Correlation between China and host countries indicates that the number of China's outward foreign direct investment to the host country is a key factor. (3) Innovation capacity and rich R&D resources in developed countries, but policy and institutions in developing countries are main factors for R&D investment of Chinese companies. (4) Geographic distance between China and host countries seems only matter for Chinese R&D investment in developing countries.

Academicians, as national high-end research leaders, play an important role in innovative development, talent training, scientific research guidance, national major strategies and core technology breakthroughs. Based on the survey of 755 academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the spatial analysis methods such as nuclear density analysis and mobility index are used in this paper to systematically analyze the characteristics of spatial distribution and three flow patterns of study, employment and changing workplaces of China's top academic talents. The results indicate that: (1) The birthplaces or native places of the academicians are mainly located in the eastern coastal regions with good economic conditions and profound cultural heritages; The academic qualifications of the academicians are mainly obtained in regions such as Beijing, Shanghai and Jiangsu Province, where top universities (also known as 985 and 211 universities) are located. The first workplaces of the academicians present different manifestations in different periods. The final workplaces are mainly distributed in megacities such as Beijing and Shanghai. (2) The flow of education (birthplace-university) moves from some provinces in the east to the regional center cities, such as Beijing and Shanghai. After graduation, the employment flow shows the characteristics of a large number of destinations which vary with different periods of different academicians, and the degree of spatial aggregation is small. (3) Some 46.23% of the academicians have a tendency of changing their workplaces. The flow of academicians who changed their workplaces one time presented the agglomeration characteristics of “peacocks fly to southeast”, which comes from a long narrative poem with the same name in ancient China, this article uses it to describe the phenomenon that many China's top academic talents moves to the southeast coastal zones, with obvious spatial orientation; the academicians who changed their workplaces two or more times have no apparent spatial aggregation feature except for the last flow by the cause of changing workplace. (4) The analysis of flow index shows that Beijing and Shanghai, as rapidly developed economic zones, are both strong inflow and strong outflow centers with large two-way flow; while Tibet, Hainan, Macao, Inner Mongolia, and Guangxi provincial-level regions have a zero mobility index, and they are subordinate provinces.

The shrinkage of inter-provincial immigration is a new phenomenon in the migration of Guangdong province. Based on the fifth and sixth population census data as well as 1% population sample survey data in 2015, this paper respectively investigates the evolution pattern of inter-provincial immigration shrinkage on provincial and county scales in Guangdong province from 2000 to 2015, and discusses the causes of evolution difference in inter-provincial immigration shrinkage of counties and case cities. The conclusions are as follows: (1) From 2010 to 2015, the shrinkage of inter-provincial immigration in Guangdong has taken shape, and the size of migrating to the province from 15 other provinces, such as Sichuan, Hubei, Henan and Hunan, has declined, which went up in 2000-2010. (2) The trend of inter-provincial immigration shrinkage on county scale is significant in the past 5 years, and the proportion of counties with inter-provincial immigration shrinkage is as high as 84.09%. The type of changing from inter-provincial immigration growth into inter-provincial immigration shrinkage is dominant in the evolution pattern, and the inter-provincial immigration of the Pearl River Delta and peripheral districts, where the inter-provincial immigration was on the rise during 2000-2010, on the contrary, began to shrink in 2010-2015. (3) Compared with the counties of continuous growth in inter-provincial immigration during the two periods, the higher employment size of the tertiary industry, per capita fiscal expenditure, the share of fixed assets investment in GDP, the share of foreign investment in GDP, and population density, the lower the probability of changing from the type of interprovincial immigration growth to that of inter-provincial immigration shrinkage. However, the higher the employment size in the secondary industry, the greater the possibility of changing from the type of interprovincial immigration growth to that of inter-provincial immigration shrinkage. The shrinkage differentiation of inter-provincial immigration in Guangzhou and Shenzhen mainly depends on the gap in technological innovation and public service. The reduction of Dongguan's inter-provincial immigrations and growth in Zhuhai's inter-provincial immigrations are respectively affected by the weak external demand and pleasant residential environment.

Based on the data on China's 2010-2016 prefecture-level city pollution supervision level, The Rank-Size rule is used to analyze the scale distribution of urban environmental pollution supervision level in China. Using spatial autocorrelation, spatial econometric model and other geoscience research methods, we adopt the quantitative analysis to examine the regional differences, spatial and temporal distribution patterns, influencing factors and spatial spillover effects of urban pollution regulation in China. Four conclusions are listed below: (1) From 2010 to 2016, China's pollution supervision level showed an overall upward trend, and its regional agglomeration was obvious. There was a significant spatial autocorrelation in the pollution supervision level. Among them, the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta were relatively stable high-value gathering areas of pollution control, and in recent years extended to the eastern Shandong Peninsula urban agglomeration, while the central and western regions were stable low-value gathering areas, indicating that the pollution supervision level had obvious regional aggregation. (2) The level of urban pollution regulation in China presents a sub-type distribution. The cities with high pollution supervision level are mainly distributed in the eastern and central regions. The scale of pollution supervision between high-order cities is gradually narrowing, and the distribution among cities is relatively well distributed. The dispersion trend is more obvious than the concentration trend. (3) Considering the complexity of the influencing factors, the spatial measurement model is used to analyze the influencing factors in the selection of many research methods. The urban population density, economic development level and proportion of secondary industry output value have a significant positive impact on urban pollution supervision level, whereas urban scale has a negative impact on pollution supervision level. (4) Urban economic development, population density, openness, and industrial structure have a significant direct effect on the spillover effect of urban pollution supervision level, while the ratio of the output value of the secondary industry and sulphur dioxide emissions have a significant indirect effect on the pollution supervision level, that is, the promotion of the secondary industry in the region is conducive to that of pollution supervision in neighboring cities

The contradiction between agricultural land conservation and urban development is one of the most important problems in metropolitan areas. The purpose of this study is to explore the value and ways of considering agricultural multifunctionality (MFA) to improve land use management in metropolitan areas of China. This paper begins with a brief introduction to the nested multi-scale hierarchies of MFA and a theoretical analysis of the relationship between MFA and land use management. Then, it provides a framework integrating the assessment of MFA for land use management in metropolitan areas. After that, a case study is conducted in Haidian District of Beijing in order to test and further develop the framework. The case study includes an analysis of the land use changes in Haidian from 1968 to 2014 based upon the interpretation of high resolution remote sensing images, and an analysis on the interaction between the transformation of MFA and land use policies in Haidian in the same period. We find that the concept of agricultural multifunctionality should not be equated with land use or landscape multifunctionality. Agricultural functions are the benefits from agricultural activities, which directly influence on stakeholders’ decision-making; while land use functions refer to the outputs from the land, which can develop into different agricultural functions. The assessment of agricultural multifunctionality can provide scientific basis for the management of agricultural lands. The nested multi-scale hierarchies of MFA also provide ways to coordinate the interests of the stakeholders at different scales. The framework integrating MFA is built on the basis of the actual land use management system in China, in which, the managers at the regional level play a dominant role in the formation of land use pattern in metropolitan areas. The regional land use managers mainly rely on two types of instruments, namely, land use zoning and agricultural policies. The framework integrating MFA requires, firstly, the assessment of MFA at the farm and regional scale; secondly, to implement land use zoning based upon MFA and policies that focus on promoting multifunctional farming, such as taxes, compensation, training and others. Attentions should be paid to the creation of mechanisms that convert the interests at the regional and national scales to the motivation of farmers. The case study in Haidian suggests that the framework is feasible and valuable for the improvement of land use management in metropolitan areas. Finally, future research is needed in the following aspects, namely the quantitative assessment and mapping of MFA, analysis on the influence of geographical conditions or urbanization level on the supply and demand of agricultural functions in metropolitan areas, and land use optimization incorporating the multiple roles of agricultural lands. Land use management based upon MFA is meaningful in terms of the conservation of land resources, the development of urban agriculture and the maintaining of regional sustainability in metropolitan areas.

It is of great significance to study the economic resilience characteristics of old industrial bases to promote the revitalization of these decayed old industrial areas and to enhance their capacity on resisting against domestic and global disruptions. This paper uses the concept of regional economic resilience to show the mechanisms underlying the economic development of Liaoning Province. First, it divides the economic growth rate of Liaoning Province from 1990-2015 into different economic cycles. Then, this paper characterizes the regional economic resilience of Liaoning Province by measuring its urban economic resistance and recovery feature in different periods. Meanwhile, the paper explores the mechanism underlying regional economic resilience by decomposing regional economic resilience into two aspects through the Shift-Share method: the industrial structure and the regional competitiveness. We obtained the following three main findings. First, regional economic resilience displays different characteristics which are dynamically changing across different periods. Compared with the whole nation, urban economy of Liaoning Province shows a lower resistance capacity against various disturbance, and it is more vulnerable to these disruptions. Second, both urban industrial structure and regional competitiveness can affect the capacity of regional economic resilience of Liaoning Province. We found that the regional competitiveness plays a more significant role, as the capacity of Liaoning’s regional economic resilience is constrained by its industrial structure and competitiveness. Third, “path dependence” has affected the development of service industry in the province for a long time, which is featured by the low level of industry structure and weak competitiveness. We also discovered that there exists a serious mismatch between the industrial structure level and the competitiveness in the secondary industry. Influenced by the phenomenon of institutional locking under the path dependence, the state-owned economy, which is often of poor management, accounts for a large proportion in the secondary industry. These all restrict the regional economic resilience of Liaoning Province. Aiming at exploring the characteristics and internal mechanism of regional economic resilience, the paper put forward some suggestions for the economic revitalization of Liaoning old industrial base.

Clarifying the spatiotemporal changes of drought and its influencing factors is of vital importance to the construction of ecological engineering and the sustainable development of social economy in the Loess Plateau. Using the daily precipitation data of 59 meteorological stations in the Loess Plateau, this paper attempts to describe the temporal and spatial variation trends of drought in the region on multi-time scales during 1960-2016. Based on Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), Sen+Mann-Kendall analysis, correlation analysis and other climate diagnosis methods, we analyzed the relationship between atmospheric circulation anomalies and drought variations. The results showed that: (1) The SPEI presented a downward trend in recent 57 years, showing a tendency from wet to dry. However, the change trend was not significant and the decline rate was only 0.032/10a. The significant drought trend occurred since the early 1970s and the late 1990s, the water-loggings were frequent during 1980s to the early 1990s. (2) The interannual SPEI (SPEI-12) indicated that there was a consistent drought trend in the whole Loess Plateau, the western part of Shanxi Province, the northern part of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, the central-eastern part of Gansu, Hohhot in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Huashan in Shaanxi Province, which showed an significant drought trend, while a wetting tendency was observed in northwest and southwest parts of the Loess Plateau, and the north of Henan Province, moreover the increasing trend was obvious in Jingtai in Gansu Province and Xining in Qinghai Province, with the trend coefficient being respectively 0.36/10a and 0.35/10a. (3) On the inter-seasonal scales, drought trends were found in three seasons except winter, among them summer and autumn were remarkable, the decline rate was similar, at 0.03/10a. In spatial variation, there existed a regional difference of seasonal drought trend. The variation trend of spring drought was consistent with the interannual variation, in autumn the drought trend covered a larger range, which accounted for 64.53% of the total study area, while in winter the scope of drought decreased and was non-significant, and only 33.29% of meteorological stations showed a trend of drought. (4) IOD, NAO, PDO, AMO and ENSO3.4 were the dominant influencing factors for annual and seasonal precipitation variability over the Loess Plateau, the influence had obvious characteristics of interannual and interdecadal phase transition. Multiple regression model indicates that IOD and NAO could well explain drought variations over the Loess Plateau, which accounted for 22.98% and 12.23% of drought, respectively, compared to ENSO3.4. Our results suggest that precipitation over the Loess Plateau has a good correlation with Southwest Monsoon.

Crop water supply and demand is an important reference for rational and scientific irrigation. The imbalance of water supply and demand is also the root cause of agricultural drought and flood. Based on meteorological data from 91 stations from 1961-2015 above the Bengbu Sluice in the Huaihe River Basin, we calculated effective precipitation of summer maize by “effective utilization coefficient method”. The water demand was calculated by the Penman-Monteith (P-M) formula and “crop coefficient method” recommended by the FAO. The spatial and temporal characteristics of water supply and demand of summer maize were analyzed, and the change of water budget index during summer maize growth periods was discussed. The water deficit status (including effective precipitation, water demand, water shortage and water deficit index) during the growth period of summer maize at typical stations were also discussed. The results showed that the effective precipitation in the summer maize was higher in the southern region and lower in the northern region in the past 55 years, and the change trend of each site was not obvious. The spatial distribution of water requirement presented a pattern of “lower in the southern region and higher in the northern region”, and the whole growth period and the growth stage in summer maize at most sites showed a significant decreasing trend. The spatial distribution of water deficit presented a pattern of was “lower in the southern region and higher in the northern region”, and most sites showed a significant decreasing trend in the whole growth period and sowing-seeding period. The trend of the other growth stages was not obvious. Comparison of the five typical stations showed the following findings. The water deficit degree of summer maize in northern Zhengzhou station was the most serious. The water deficit amount was about 369 mm in the whole growth period, and the water deficit index was about -0.61. The water deficit degree of Jinzhai station in the south was the lightest. The water deficit amount was about 159 mm in the whole growth period, and the water profit and loss index is about -0.29. Comparison of the water deficit status of summer maize at different growth stages can draw the following conclusions. The water deficit was more serious in the middle and late growth stages than in the early stage. During the tasseling-maturity period, the water shortages at the five stations were 120 mm, 63 mm, 116 mm, 81 mm and 123 mm, respectively, and the water profit and loss indices were -0.60, -0.33, -0.58, -0.42 and -0.59, respectively.