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  • Orginal Article
    Chaolin GU
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    This paper systematically reviews the separation and evolution of China's national plans, including those on social and economic development, urban planning, land use, and environmental protection. While affirming the roles these plans have played in the past due to their professional and technological expertise, this paper holds that national plans have been quite homogeneous in terms of the goals they aim to achieve, the theoretical models they are founded upon, the ways they are compiled, and the means by which they are implemented. The cause of such homogeneity is that these plans have all been made during the process of China's transformation from a planned economy to a market economy. As a result, they are overlapping, conflicting, hard to implement and coordinate, and often fail to achieve what they are aimed at. To address this situation, China's planners and local governments are starting to advocate the integration of individual plans. However, planers and local governments are struggling to balance and coordinate these plans, because of barriers between different regions and government departments, and due to the differences these plans themselves have in the legal basis they are built upon, their durations and goals, and the technological criteria they follow. Given China's national conditions during its market-based reform, it is necessary for us to put into place a framework of overall regional development plans, whereby individual plans are integrated, each level of government has its own measures for implementing plans, and all their measures are thoroughly carried out.

  • Orginal Article
    Mingxing CHEN
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    In 2014, the "National New Urbanization Planning" was issued, which indicates that China's urbanization has entered into a transition period from "quantity growth" to "quality improvement". New urbanization will be an important work for the future China in quite a long period of time, which provides a significant opportunity for urbanization field research. This paper gives a general review on the domestic and foreign research progress in time. Internationally, the basic theory and theoretical system of urbanization have come into being. They have been enriched gradually with the deepening of the research. The research field has been expanded. The research methods have been improved. As for China's urbanization research, it developed fast despite a late start, and has made remarkable achievements in many fields, such as the scientific cognition and thoughts of a reasonable urbanization process with Chinese characteristics. In the future, five front scientific issues and their sub-issues in urbanization research have been put forward, such as the interdisciplinary features of urbanization and the establishment of urbanization discipline; the concept, principle, and method of the construction of urbanization basic theoretical system; the regional characteristics of urbanization and relationships between urban and rural integration; the developing model and spatial pattern research of sustainable development; the integration research and simulation platform of urbanization system based on the big data.

  • Orginal Article
    Gang YIN, Xi CHEN, Tashpolat TIYIP, Hua SHAO, Lei BAI, Zengyun HU, Chi ZHANG, Ting XU
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    Regional Climate Model (RegCM) simulations, which is based on the fundamental physical and metrological mechanisms, could produce high-resolution climate dataset, without being limited by the availability of meteorological stations in Central Asia. In order to analyze the climate change in Xinjiang from 1958 to 2001, this study used the RegCM model to downscale the ERA40 and NCEP/NCAR reanalysis datasets to a 40-km resolution, and compared the simulation results with three widely used extrapolation datasets (CRU, WM and APHRO). All datasets indicated increased temperature in Xinjiang, increased precipitation in southern Xinjiang, and decreased precipitation in the Tianshan mountainous areas. All datasets except for the APHRO interpolated data indicated increased precipitation in northern Xinjiang. Our analysis showed similar spatial patterns in temperature and precipitation between the RegCM simulated and the extrapolation datasets. However, the simulated regional mean temperature was -3℃ lower than that of the extrapolated datasets. The simulated precipitation in the Tianshan mountainous areas was about twice the value of the extrapolated datasets. Because 73% of the meteorological stations in the study located at the low-mountain areas or the desert plains were in relatively hot and dry climate regimes, extrapolation datasets based on observations at these stations tended to overestimate temperature and underestimate precipitation. Compared with the extropolation method, regional climate modelling considers the detailed topography/landsurface characteristics in the study region at meso-/micro-scales, and is capable to reflect the spatial variation of major climatological elements with higher precision. However, due to limited sparse field observations and a lack of high-resolution remote-sensing-based climate datasets, we are currently unable to fully evaluate the accuracy of the model simulated climate datasets in central Asia, especially in the mountainous areas.

  • Orginal Article
    Jing XU, Yulun AN, Feng HU, Liangrui MA
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    In order to study the ecological environmental characteristics of a semi-karst region, the paper takes the central area of Guizhou Province as a research area, which includes the Anshun city, Pingba County and Huaxi District. The region is the typical representative of semi-karst and karst Guanling group and Anshun group rocks. By using the TM image data and MODIS-NPP image data in April 2010, the paper makes a comparative study on the vegetation coverage and net primary productivity (NPP) and explores the ecological characteristics such as status of vegetation, vegetation net primary productivity, land carrying capacity and landscape diversity in semi-karst and karst regions by the method of NDVI dimidiate pixel model and grid computation. The research showed that the semi-karst region has different ecological features from a traditional karst region. Under the same land use type conditions, the vegetation growth of the semi-karst region has obvious advantages, which indicates arbor as the representative of the high vegetation coverage has wide and continuous concentration distribution. By contrast, high vegetation coverage area of the karst region is mainly composed of shrubs, scattered and broken. Overall the semi-karst region has the high land carrying capacity; its net primary productivity level is also significantly higher than that of the karst region. However, close attention should be paid to sensitivity of the ecological environment to human activities in the semi-karst region. Landscape analysis shows that although the vegetation coverage degree is bigger, the number of plaque is larger, the unit area is lesser and the plaque is more broken. The phenomenon shows that the semi-karst vegetation is prone to disturbance and degradation under the interference of environment and vegetation component is not stable. Fragmentation index and Shannon Diversity index also shows that the degree of landscape heterogeneity is larger and landscape structure is more complicated. Therefore, through the analysis of the characteristics of the semi-karst region's eco-environment, the paper pointed out that the ecological environment problems in the region need more concern, and the eco-environment in this region needs further research. Also we should take appropriate measures to restore and protect the ecology and implement better ecological development strategy. By using the superior conditions of the regional ecological environment and implementing reasonable human production activities, we are able to promote the harmonious development of human and nature.

  • Orginal Article
    Wei XU, Shaoming PAN, Peihong JIA, Xu YANG, Liguo CAO, Wei ZHANG, Xiangdong RUAN, Yongjing GUAN
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    The background values of 137Cs along the coast of the Beibu Gulf have not been sufficiently presented in China so far. This thesis collected 55 surface samples and 1 profile sample in the Beibu Gulf. The specific activity of 137Cs and organic contents of individual sample were tested and the accumulation amount of 137Cs in the section sample was calculated. The background value of 137Cs in the research area was finally determined. The thesis also analyzed the distribution features of 137Cs in surface soil along the Fangchenggang coastal zone of the Beibu Gulf. The relationship between the specific activity of 137Cs and organic contents in the sample soil was discussed as well. The findings showed that the background value of 137Cs in the soil of the research area was 626±15 Bq/m2, and the atmospheric precipitation of 137Cs accorded with the precipitation condition of 137Cs in the northern hemisphere. By comparing the background values of 137Cs in multiple places within China, it is suggested that the variance among the background values of 137Cs in regions at the same latitude can mainly be attributed to rainfall. Moreover, the spacial distribution variance of latitude zone, climate factors like typhoon and the particularity of geographic position also have great potential to influence the precipitation of 137Cs. The research on the specific activity of the surface samples and the distribution of sampling sites suggested that natural factors and human activities played an important role in the redistribution of 137Cs in soil. The specific activity of 137Cs in different surface samples exhibited the following order from high to low: natural forest land, paddy field, dry land, grassland, and estuary and gulf. A Pearson’s correlation analysis was conducted and significant corelation was found between the values of 137Cs content and organic contents in the surface samples and P01 sediment core, with the corelation coefficients being respectively 0.414 and 0.732. Discussing the background value of 137Cs in the Fangchenggang coastal zone of the Beibu Gulf and the distribution features of 137Cs in surface soil along the coast can promote further quantitative research on soil erosion and accumulation along the coast of the Beibu Gulf as well as provide scientific evidence for the evaluation of the environmental impact of the Red Sand Plant.

  • Orginal Article
    Weifeng QIAO, Yansui LIU, Yahua WANG, Yuying LU
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    Research on urban space expansion from three-dimensional perspective helps to comprehensively grasp the laws of urban spatial expansion, and promote the scientific policy making of city planning and land use management. This dissertation selects urban built-up area of Nanjing as an example, based on four periods of urban three-dimensional models during 2000-2012, gives a multi-angle analysis on the characteristics of Nanjing three-dimensional urban space expansion since the beginning of the 21st century. In the process of analysis, we used methods such as urban skyline, urban volume and fractal dimension, urban three-dimensional gravity center, the relationship between the number and floor area of high-rise buildings. The results show: (1) The fluctuation of urban skyline in Nanjing is obvious, the height standard deviation of urban buildings increases from 8.78 in 2000 to 12.13 in 2012, urban skyline morphology in west-east direction has transformed from the pattern of "one high peak and two low peaks" in 2000 to the pattern of "two peaks in the middle and west, gentle in the east" in 2012. (2) Urban volume is in a process of constant growth, 2000-2004 was the fastest growing period with a rate of 51%. The sustained growth of volume fractal dimension D indicates that the form of urban expansion transforms from two-dimension to three-dimension morphology continuously. Change characteristic of fractal dimension at different stages is similar to that of total volume. (3) The height of urban three-dimensional gravity center increases from 2.4 m in 2000 to 2.51 m in 2012, its planar projection point has moved from the east side of Gulou square in 2000 to the south side of Xinjiekou in 2012, the direction of movement has experienced the changing process from the southeast to the west. All this reflects that the main development direction of three-dimensional city is south and west. (4) The growth rate of average height of high-rise buildings becomes increasingly higher from 2000 to 2012. The analysis on the relationship of "floor area-building height" shows that from 2000 to 2012, the urban morphology of Nanjing has been in the transition from weak pyramid stage to balance pyramid stage even to dome top stage especially in the center district of densely distributed high-rise buildings. The research provides a new perspective for the study of urban space expansion.

  • Orginal Article
    Minxi ZHOU, Yongxue LIU, Manchun LI, Chao SUN, Wei ZOU
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    In the South China Sea, the vast ocean is dotted by hundreds of islands. It is meaningful to dynamically update precise geo-information of multi-objective coral islands in real time. Considering the poor spatial accessibility of these islands, remote sensing as a modern monitoring technique outstands the traditional time-consuming ground survey with relatively low expenses and high efficiency. This paper proposes a dual-scale transferred framework applying hybrid model-data driven technique for geomorphologic information extraction based on the 'ring-like' spatial structure of coral islands. Taking the sedimentary environment of each geographic zone and benthic detection capacity of CBERS-02B CCD image into account, we established a practical geomorphology classification system mainly based on 'geo-entity' and supplemented by subclass, i.e., 'geomorphologic structures'. To accord with the classification system, we developed a fully automatically geo-information extraction method for multi-objective coral islands: (1) outlines of first-class geomorphologic zones are delineated by applying top-down and model-driven GVF Snake model; (2) for sub-class geomorphologic structure within the first-class geomorphologic zones, down-top data-driven multi-threshold OTSU segmentation algorithm is applied after removing cloud and shadow areas; (3) region-growing algorithm restricted by gradient-neighborhood criterion is applied for external discretely distributed submerged sandy beaches and hidden shoals extraction. <br/> Experiment for Yongle Atoll (Xisha) based on CBERS-02B CCD images shows that the hybrid framework proposed in this paper outperforms the traditional data-driven supervised classification methods, and the overall accuracy is up to 88.89%, better than ML classification (77.49%) and SVM classification (82.16%). In comparison, this proposed method can delineate the regional geomorphologic heterogeneity under the premise of guarantee spatial continuity and completeness of geographic zones. Additionally, this method is robust to stripe noises, keeping geo-entity from being shattered. Furthermore, the top-down geographic zone segmentation provides the foundation for mining the spatial topological relationship between the ring-like zonation, so as to enhance the feature separability. Practically, this method is flexible and fully automatic, but the final classification result is dependent on key parameters setting, which calls relatively high standard for interpreter.

  • Orginal Article
    Yongqiang LIU, Liuwen LIAO, Hualou LONG, Jianxin QIN
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    With the rapid development of Chinese economy, many negative effects of land use transitions under the pressure of rapid urbanization on local ecological system and environment have occurred. This paper examines the dynamic patterns of land use transitions in Hunan province, using high-resolution Landsat TM (Thematic Mapper) data in 1995, 2000, 2005 and 2010, and socio-economic data from both research institutes and government departments, and assesses the changes of ecosystem services value (ESV) by drawing a connection between the observed land use dynamics and the evaluation of ESV, based on the latest research of Costanza et al. and some revisions adapted to the situation of China. The outcomes indicated that, during the period from 1995 to 2010, the land use changed significantly, characterized by the increase of construction land and the decrease of cultivated land and grassland; ESV of the study area decreased by 0.42%, from 880.78 to 877.09 billion RMB, due to the losses of large quantities of ecological land to construction land. Then, some of the major implications for improving the land use of Hunan province were discussed. The authors argue that it is fundamental to meet the demand of construction land for socio-economic development, meanwhile, to protect regional ecosystem services function and maintain its stability; only in this way Hunan province may realize the sustainable use of ecological resources in the process of rapid urbanization, as well as the integration of economic, social and ecological benefits.

  • Orginal Article
    Weifang LI, Teng YU, Jialin LI, Pengcheng CHEN, Yang CHEN
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    The coastal zone lies in the overlapping and intersection region of marine and continent, and hence multiple factors have effects on the coastal land use including natural resources, social and economic activities. Therefore, it is of great significance to evaluate the suitability of coastal land for rational allocation, development and utilization in coastal zones. In this paper, we implement the suitability evaluation model (LandUSEM) with the land use dataset of southern Hangzhou Bay in 2010. The frequencies in different combinations of land use types and all evaluation factors are used to evaluate the suitability of coastal land use, separate suitability results from single factors and comprehensive results from different land use types are achieved. Some conclusions drawn from the evaluation results are in the following: (1) The proportion of medium-level suitability is 73.15%, and nearly 25% of the coastal land use is assigned as the critical suitability type or below. It is shown that overall the suitability result in land use of southern Hangzhou Bay performs well, while different suitability categories behave obvious grading divergences. (2) Suitability results in southern Hangzhou Bay has clear characteristics of spatial distributions. Suitability evaluation results in Yuyao and Cixi city outperform that of Zhenhai. Coastal areas denoting medium- and high-level suitability results in Zhenhai is larger than those of Yuyao and Cixi, whereas the critical suitability result of Zhenhai covers far smaller coastal areas than those of Yuyao and Cixi. The explanations for that is partly because of local industrial structures in each city. (3) Each land use type has suitable development status in varying degrees. Some 96.45% of urban and rural construction land is estimated as critical suitablility and above above, and moreover the critical suitability takes 70.91% of the construction land. Some 89.31% of shoal land has critical suitability and above, and among that 80.72% is highly suitable. This indicates that the shoal conditions have good potentials in land use, and proper and timely actions are encouraged to transfer shoal lands into agricultural lands or urban construction lands to satisfy the needs from economic development in southern Hangzhou Bay.

  • Orginal Article
    Kang WU, Chuanglin FANG, Miaoxi ZHAO
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    Fuelled by globalization, informatization and rapid urbanization, the Chinese urban system has witnessed dramatic changes in the past four decades, which shows a combined changing characteristic in both expanded geographical scope and intensified intercity connections. This paper investigates an integrated network-based approaches and spatial analysis to explore the spatial organization process and the basic regularity of Chinese intercity networks. More specifically, this study examines how 330 Chinese cities are connected through 108,570 ownership linkages of 307,915 local corporations for the year 2010. Major findings include: (1) the backbone of the Chinese intercity corporate network is diamond-shaped and anchored by four major metropolitan areas (Beijing in the North; Shanghai, East; Guangzhou-Shenzhen, South; Chengdu, West), intercity network strengths reveal a significant spatial heterogeneity; (2) urban network organization is a complicated process that involve both preferential attachment and geographic proximity interactions; (3) the overall structure of the intercity corporate networks undergo a transition process that from a simple random period to a complex but orderly one and also features small-world network properties; (4) city degree distribution of Chinese intercity networks is characterized by weak assortativity and rich-club effects; and (5) a combination interpretation of clustering coefficient and degree distribution identifies hierarchical and regional tendencies.

  • Orginal Article
    Renfeng MA, Mei WANG, Wenzhong ZHANG, Jianhui YU, Yicheng WANG, Liyan REN
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    Conflicts as NIMBY (not in my Backyard) from chemical plants clusters have become a major concern for some port cities. There is an urgent need to diagnose the externality stem from petrochemical industry and the influence on human settlements in neighboring areas, so as to optimize urban spatial planning and thus mitigate man-nature contradiction. Aiming to evaluate the residents' perception to the impact of petrochemical industry cluster on human settlements in Zhenhai district, with the methods of questionnaire survey and semi-structure interview, this research discussed residents’ perception and its spatial differentiation about relationship between environmental effect caused by petrochemical industry cluster in port area and human settlements in detail. The result revealed that: (1)Statistics from questionnaire survey of residents' perception indicated that the residents' satisfaction about physical health, industrial emissions, air pollution, sewage discharge and disposal hold extremely low level; the security of community and environmental pollution relating to the potential harm and environmental emissions from the cluster of chemical industry were the most responsible factor for the negative environment externality and a predominant factor impact on urban human settlements as well. (2) The research was not only consistent with Tobler's First Law of Geography, which reflected how the residents perceive the environment externality with various chemical industry impact on human settlements in spatial differentiation, but also disclosed that the spatial optimization of urban industry shall take both industrial development foundation and nature suitability into account. On the other hand, there was a perceptive difference among the old, middle-aged and young people, which was manifested by education groups. With long-term residence near petrochemical industry cluster area, the environmental perception of people was characterized by changing of time series, hence the perception of old folk was more objective; On the contrary, due to shorter livelihood time and influenced extensively by various moderately disseminated environment issues, the environmental perception of middle-aged and youth was subjective and ambivalent. (3) This research preliminarily verified that the residents' perception of human settlements mirrored the pros and cons of urban industry spatial organization to a certain extent and inspire some ideas to problems. In other words, "human settlement" could act as a comprehensive medium to vividly portray the urban industry spatial organization and environmental externality that as a key point to crack the issue of environment contention and update urban industry. This paper provides a good case to deeply understand the upgrade of urban industry functional zone, the requirement of urban human settlement development, and the preference of different hierarchies. Meanwhile, it also offers a practical significance to guide the optimizing urban industry spatial distribution and developing livable city.

  • Orginal Article
    Jianke GUO, Xiaofei DU, Caizhi SUN, Zeyu WANG
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    Harbour-city interaction plays a major part in the formation, evaluation and sustainable development of a harbour city. Therefore, how to measure the relationship between harbour and city and to reveal the pattern of interaction between harbour and city is a difficult problem in the area of the study on the harbour city. For a long time, not only the study about the quantitative analysis method which was designed for analyzing the function of harbour and city is relatively weak, but also the research on connection mechanism of harbour city interaction can not obtain a satisfactory conclusion. On the basis of RCI (Relative Concentration Index), the conception, connotation and algorithm of DCI (Dynamic Concentration Index) were put forward, furthermore the interaction between harbour and city and changing tendency mainly in three periods of 1997-2001, 2002-2006 and 2007-2011 for the major harbor cities in the Bohai Rim were quantitatively measured. The main port cities in this region consisted of Rizhao, Cangzhou, Yingkou, Qinhuangdao, Dandong, Tangshan, Jinzhou, Yantai, Qingdao, Dalian, Weihai and Tianjin. At last the driving mode of harbour city was systematically analysed by using impulse response function based on VAR (Vector Auto regression) model. The results clearly showed that the status of interaction between harbour and city of 12 harbor cities in the Bohai Rim can be accurately divided into three types: harbor driven pattern (Rizhao, Cangzhou, Yingkou, Qinhuangdao, Dandong, Tangshan and Jinzhou); city driven pattern (Qingdao, Dalian, Weihai and Tianjin four harbour cities) and harbor-city balance driven pattern (Yantai). What's more, the changing tendency can be devided into three types (continual rise, continual decline and fluctuation). According to the DCI, the relationship between harbour and city was analysed based on impulse response theory. Afterwards, the mode of interaction of different relationships between harbor and city were divided as well as that of driving mechanism and driving factors. In the end, the specific differences and connections which were closely linked with the interaction between harbour and city in different harbour cities were profoundly revealed. With the help of this study, the recognition of the internal mechanism of relationship between harbour and city in the geographical perspective was efficiently enriched.

  • Orginal Article
    Xiaoyan HUANG, Xiaqiong LIU, Xiaoshu CAO
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    In recent years, as low-carbon city gradually has become a significant research field on studies on global climate change, the scholars at home and abroad have launched a series of research from various angles. However, there is little research discussing about urban commuting carbon emission characteristics and the influencing factors of carbon emissions at disaggregated level. The data used in this study came from a 2011-2012 survey of 291 residents from households in three typical communities from different parts of Guangzhou. The variables used in this study consist of four categories: demographics, auto ownership and use, built environment characteristics, and attitudes. In the survey, respondents were asked to report the number of automobiles in their households and their travel behavior. The survey also contained a list of demographic characteristics, including household size, household income, gender, age, education underground, having a driver's license, and occupation. Consistent with previous studies, we develop a coefficient method for calculating the amount of commuting carbon emissions. In this study, we adopt categorization and Lorenz curve to analyze the differentiation of commuting carbon emissions characteristics between different individuals, inner-community and trans-community. Specifically, we developed a multiple regression analysis method to analyze the impact of selected 16 variables on commuting carbon emissions. The results of commuting carbon emission characteristics analyses show that commuting carbon emission of residents in urban districts is lower than that of their counterparts in county-level cities. Dufu, Nanyayuan and Lijiang Garden communities are consistent with the rule of "60-20" proposed from the UK experience. Multiple regression analysis suggests that commuting distance, travel modes of residents, commuting frequency, income and population density of the sub-district have significant effects on CO2 emissions. Finally, on the basis of the above findings, the paper puts forward some policy suggestions for reducing commuting carbon emissions.

  • Orginal Article
    Wen GUO, Zhenfang HUANG, Li WANG
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    Based on the field research, the statistics for resident perception of social space are processed with SPSS18.0 and AMOS17.0 in the context of space production at the cultural tourism destination, Ancient Town of Zhouzhuang. And the measurement research on residents' social space perception model as well as perception differences between and among different types of residents with different occupations is undertaken by means of exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis as well. The study arrives at the following results: Firstly, the analysis of subjects shows that there exists a three-dimension structure in the resident perception of social space, that is, Interest Connection, Value Efficiency and Emotion Attachment; Secondly, the phenomenon of decreased differentiation in perception level is discovered, specifically, from the Interest Connection to the Value Efficiency, and then down to Emotion Attachment; In essence, it reflects the perception rule, a kind of deep structure from the outside layer of economy to social perception, and then to the core of psychological perception. The tested residents do not show overall recognition on tourism development even though they are endowed the chance power of participating in the tourism development on the one hand, on the other hand, the fact that the social identity perception and the psychological identity perception have not been deepened yet presents a contradictory structure in the resident social space perception; Thirdly, successively decreased differentiation is also found in the above-mentioned three-dimension structure for different types of residents with different occupations due to the difference in the content or degree of tourism participation. What's more, difference between each type of group is found. The study comes to the following conclusion: Highly-qualified social space perception assumes comprehensiveness in cognition structure; the imbalance in the resident perception structure of social space triggers new demands upon promoting the social cohesion concerning the production of tourism space; To further advance the resident space participation degree as well as perception, the step-by-step efforts shall be made through the following path, that is, from limited participation to developmental participation and then to a full one. The modest study is hoped to be of any significance for the rational and sustainable tourism development of the Ancient Town of Zhouzhuang.

  • Orginal Article
    Fenghua PAN, Zhiyong LAI, Yuejing GE
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    The diplomatic relations with neighboring countries are critical for the regional stability and economic development for a country. China has considered neighboring countries as strategic partners and implemented diplomatic policies to promote harmony, prosperity and security of neighboring countries. Binational trade between countries is one driving factor that may influence the national relationship in the globalization era. Therefore, the trade relations between China and its neighboring countries are critical to understand China's geopolitical environment. This paper analyzes the trade relations between China and its neighboring countries using social network analysis (SNA) method. Drawing on the trade data between China and its neighbors in the years of 2001, 2006 and 2011, we analyze the economic dependence between China and its neighboring countries. Based on SNA method, we conduct the centrality analysis and structure equivalence analysis aiming to explore the trade network of China and its neighbors in various aspects. The results suggest that the trade dependence is unequal between China and its neighbors. The neighboring countries are more dependent on the trade with China, and the trade dependence of these countries on China was significantly increased from 2001 to 2011. The trade network has an obvious core-periphery structure with China and Japan at the core positions. From 2001 to 2011, the degree centrality of China and its neighbors presents a power-law distribution pattern, which means China is at the center of the trade networks. Moreover, the degree centrality of China has grown fast and became the largest in 2011. The results suggest that China plays a leading role in the trade networks and has great economic influence over its neighboring countries. This research shows that SNA method has a great potential in further geopolitical research.

  • Orginal Article
    Fangdao QIU, Xiaodan TANG, Chunmin ZHANG, Chuangeng ZHU, Xiaowei YAO
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    Industry upgrading is an important way for speeding up economic development transformation, which is in accordance with economic growth. Based on the GIS spatial technology, the paper analyzes the temporal-spatial evolution characteristics in Jiangsu province during the industrial transformation period from 2000 to 2012 using the methods of industrial transformation coefficient, high-level industrial index, Gini-coefficient index, and specialization index and shift-share analysis. Major findings of this research are: (1) the industrial transformation advancement demonstrates a slowdown increase after a period of rapid development, while the industrial structure upgrade is always advancing quickly in the past 10 years. At the same time, the growth rates of industries are different and the competitive superiority industries are replaced by the capital and technology intensive industries, as well as the leading industries which are mainly chemical industry, electronic appliances, instrument and meters. The fastest growing industry covers advanced manufacturing and environmental protection industries. (2) In spatial structure, the industrial transformation coefficient gradually reduces from North Jiangsu to Middle Jiangsu, followed by South Jiangsu. The advancement of industry structure shows the trend of dish distribution with the high periphery and the low Hongze Lake-surrounded area. The industrial agglomeration demonstrates the pattern of high north-south and low central Jiangsu, and three main highlands of industrial agglomeration including Suzhou, Nanjing and Xuzhou. In addition, this article also finds out that industrial specialization level turns on a circle-shaped pattern in Jiangsu province, with the level of industrial technology gradually reducing with South Jiangsu as the core radiating to its neighboring regions. (3) Resource endowment, technology innovation, market demand and regional policy are the main driving forces for spatial and temporal variations of industrial transformation. (4) The proposals of advancing industrial transformation are put forward, such as promoting the advancement of industry structure, optimizing industrial space layout, promoting the specialized labor division, improving the scientific and reasonable industrial transformation mechanism.