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    Perspectives and Contention
  • Perspectives and Contention
    Fang WANG, Zhou LV, Bing ZHANG, Song ZHANG, Wei DONG, Peilin LIU, Zhenfang HUANG, Bihu WU, Shaoming LU, Feifei XU, Feng ZHEN
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    About our urban and rural memory, should we remember? Can we remember? Are we willing to remember? Are we allowed to remember? Existing in the real life, memory is alive rather than dead. Memory not only belongs to the elite, grassroots' memory is also precious. Historical context implicated in the memory should be cherished without equating the protection of memory with the protection of urban heritage, and also should we face the incompatibility between the memory and the development of modern time. Memory is not unreal talk, but the source of cultural self-confidence as well as urban and rural revival. The time of the river never backflows, the changed urban and rural space can no longer return to the past, thus the reflection of the future of urban and rural today is essentially the reflection of social development. Combined with the comparison of international research, in terms of the evolution mechanism and spatial logic of urban and rural memory in the current context of China, here converged the theory and practice discussion in the fields of geography, planning, architecture, cultural relics and tourism. With the constant change of society, the preservation and development of memory and homesickness is to show the history of the past, accommodate with life of today, and delight the creation of the future.

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    Lanhui LI, Linshan LIU, Yili ZHANG, Mingjun DING, Shicheng LI, Qian CHEN
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    Assessing the elevation-dependent alpine grassland phenology is of great significance to reveal the relationship between vegetation and climate change. Based on the two Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from SPOT and MODIS and the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) from MODIS during the period of 2000-2013, DEM, eco-geographical and grassland distribution map, the patterns of elevation-dependent alpine grassland phenology over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) were analyzed. The results showed that: (1) With an increasing elevation gradient, the distribution of spring and autumn phenology in alpine grassland exhibited a regular change, while the magnitude of the trend of spring phenology in alpine grassland was quite different from that of autumn phenology on the TP. (2) There was a dividing line of approximately 3200 m above sea level on the trends of spring phenology in alpine grassland with an increasing elevation gradient. Below this line, the magnitude of spring phenology advancement increased significantly, whereas above the line, it decreased significantly. However, the magnitude of autumn phenology delay in alpine grassland decreased and then the magnitude of the advancement increased significantly across the altitudinal gradient. (3) Opposite trends of alpine grassland phenology change were observed compared with southern Qinghai Plateau alpine-meadow-steppe region (IC1) and southern Tibet montane shrub-steppe region(IIC1). Changes in the trends of spring phenology with increasing elevation were quite different between the above two regions, but those of autumn phenology were synchronized. These differences suggest that the vertical variability of the alpine grassland phenology derived from remote sensing could not directly mirror the elevation-dependent warming on the TP.

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    Jian GUO, Shi CHEN, Bin XU, Ge SHEN, Yunxiang JIN, Yujing ZHANG, Xiuchun YANG
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    This paper extracts grasslands greenup from SPOT-VGT NDVI filtered by D-L during 1999 to 2012, and uses ground greenup date to verify the result. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) A new method, which combine grassland vegetation remote sensing regreening stage monitoring and ground validation, is presented. Greenup date of Xilingol grassland is extracted by using dynamic threshold coefficients of 25% and its precision can reach 68%. (2) The mean greenup date in Xilingol league is mainly observed from early April to late May. The greenup dates are delayed from south to north, with the average change being -1.5 d/10a. Exploring spatiotemporal characteristics of grasslands phenology in Xilingol is of theoretical and practical significance in China's combat to climate change, grassland protection and management in the presence of specific problems, decision making in local agricultural and animal husbandry, and vulnerable grassland ecosystems rehabilitation.

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    Xinxin WANG, Geping LUO, Hui YE, Qi ZHANG, Peng CAI, Miao ZHANG
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    Air temperature is one of key indicators reflecting the spatial hydrothermal heterogeneity, and it is also an indispensable factor driving ecological models or land surface models. Currently, the leading temperature datasets include Climatic Research Unit (CRU), The Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR), Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), but their spatial resolutions are so coarse that they cannot efficiently characterize the difference of heterogeneous hydrothermal patterns in a medium-scale oasis-desert ecosystem in arid regions. So the construction of mean air temperature datasets with high temporal and spatial resolution is crucial for investigating ecological interactions between oasis and desert ecosystems. The Landsat TM/ETM/OLI images, whose spatial resolution of thermal infrared band is 120 m, might be the effective data source for retrieving the daily mean air temperature datasets, which could meet the requirements for effectively representing the interactions between oasis and desert ecosystems. In this paper, firstly, the single-channel algorithm was used to estimate the land surface temperature (LST) based on Landsat TM images. The instantaneous air temperature imageries were retrieved using Zak?ek's algorithm. Then, the daily mean air temperature imageries were created based on the instantaneous temperature imageries, and the relative change rates of air temperature (R-rates) for land-cover types were calculated using the spatial daily mean air temperature imageries in different seasons. Finally, the daily mean air temperature datasets were constructed based on the mean air temperature imageries and R-rates. The R-rates showed great spatial heterogeneity in the Sangong River Basin. The R-rates of sandy desert, soil desert, reference station, cropland and hills was 1.12, 1.03, 0.97, 0.80 and 0.76, respectively, compared with built-up areas. Estimated daily mean air temperature and observed values at different weather stations showed a significant linear correlation (P<0.05). The daily mean air temperature datasets retrieved in this paper could effectively characterize the hydrothermal distribution pattern in oasis-desert ecosystems. The method used in the paper might provide a reference for retrieving the maximum and minimum air temperature.

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    Yi QU, Hualou LONG
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    Land use transition refers to the changes in land use morphology including dominant morphology and recessive morphology of a certain region over a certain period of time. If we take different land use morphologies as the points, then different land use transition processes might be the line connecting different points driven by regional socio-economic change and innovation. So, in-depth research on land use morphology may make great contribution to a better understanding of regional land use transition. This paper paid more attention to the recessive land use morphology, a multi-dimensional conception with multiple spatial and non-spatial properties. Taking the Huang-Huai-Hai region as a case study, this paper studies regional land use recessive morphology in a comprehensive way from the view point of exploitation and output. Firstly, a three-dimensional representative model for land use recessive morphology was built. This model consists of the attributes of land use intensity, land use economic condition and land use emission condition. It was subsequently used in recessive land use morphology analysis of the study area. Secondly, a K-means clustering method based on the Genetic Algorithm (KGA) was introduced into the classification for the units with different comprehensive land use recessive morphologies. This showed that the comprehensive land use recessive morphology types of the unit have close relationship to its economic development level. For example, Beijing may have the highest regional land use intensity, highest land use economic level, but lowest land use emission level for its advanced economic development level, while Zhumadian with the lowest regional land use intensity, land use economic level and land use emission level for its underdeveloped economy. Thirdly, by introducing the spatial distance and spatial autocorrelation into the KGA method, this paper proposed a new spatial clustering method combining spatial and non-spatial properties (spatial K-means clustering method based on the Genetic Algorithm, SKGA). As shown that this method performed well in the zoning analysis of comprehensive land use recessive morphologies, for it can maintain the heterogeneity in non-spatial properties, as well as take full account of spatial contiguity and spatial correlation. Finally, differentiated management measures were proposed based on the features of different comprehensive land use recessive morphology zones to support land use policy decision-making.

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    Danyang ZHAO, Lianjun TONG, Fangdao QIU, Fuyou GUO
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    Increasing evidence indicates that blind expansion of urban area has caused significant ecological environment problems. Therefore, it is important to explore the complex interaction between urban expansion and ecological environment change. Here, we built a comprehensive evaluation index system, "The P-S-R model for the Eco-environment Effect of Urban Expansion (EU-P-S-R)", to evaluate eco-environment effect of urban expansion in the Songhua River Basin from 2001 to 2013, and then explored the driving mechanism of interaction between the urban expansion system and the eco-environment system. This evaluation index system was built based on the "Pressure-State-Response (P-S-R)" function, considering the expansion pressure, expansion state and the eco-environment response for expansion. The results showed that: Firstly, these cities achieved rapidly economic and social development, but spatially unbalanced. Most of them experienced the deterioration of land use status, and their spatial difference enlarged. Besides, their eco-environment quality showed different variation trends, and the spatial pattern changed dramatically. Secondly, the comprehensive eco-environment effect index of urban expansion increased, but the spatial difference was not remarkable due to combined benefits of economic and social pressures, land use status, and eco-environmental response. Thirdly, the casual relationship between urban expansion and eco-environment of the study area accorded with the mechanism of "EU-P-S-R" model, namely, the greater the socio-economic pressure, the worse the land use condition, thus the worse the eco-environmental quality. Fourthly, all factors in the urban expansion system have strong stress effect on the eco-environment system. There was no obvious difference between the influence of the four functional groups: economic development, social development, space expansion status and intensive land use, and the stress dwindled during the research period. In the same way, each functional group of eco-environment system had significant restraint on urban expansion, and the restraint showed the characteristic of ecological status > environmental governance > resource consumption > environmental load.

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    Xinru XU, Xiaobin JIN, Zhihong ZHANG, Juan HAN, Wei SUN, Xiaomin XIANG, Jinyuan XIE, Yinkang ZHOU
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    In order to investigate the health status and spatial pattern of current housing market in China, based on 2009-2013 national residential land transaction data at the county level, this study proposes land price-economy coordination degree, land price-income matching degree, the contribution of land revenue to local financial revenue, the proportion of land transaction through market-oriented approaches (including bid invitation, auction and listing), and housing market transaction activity as evaluation indicators. Then the Ward hierarchical clustering method is used to produce a comprehensive regionalization of housing market health status in China. Finally the spatial variation of housing market health status in China's key regions (Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and Jing-Jin-Tang area) is analyzed at city level. The results show that: (1) The overall housing market health level in China needs to be improved. Some 34.48% of the research units are in reasonable health interval, and mainly distributed in southern Tianshan piedmont, Northeast China Plain, Shandong Peninsula, Dongting Lake area and other areas. Land price-economy coordination degree, land price-income matching degree and the contribution of land revenue to local financial revenue are main indicators that affect housing market health. (2) The housing market health status in China during the study period can be divided into five types consisting of "coordinated development" (ClassⅠ), "strong demand" (ClassⅡ), "economic deviation" (ClassⅢ), "financial dependence" (ClassⅣ) and "imbalanced structure" (ClassⅤ), accounting for 34.48%, 22.90%, 23.06%, 10.07% and 9.49% respectively. (3) Key regions' housing market health has significant spatial variation in land price-economy coordination degree, land price-income matching degree and housing market transaction activity. Under the requirements of current central work conference on urbanization, it is necessary for government to promote healthy and orderly development of housing market through appropriate control policies based on regional characteristics.

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    Hao LIU, Lin MA, Guoping LI
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    The rapid and imbalanced economic development in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region has widened the gap between Beijing-Tianjin and surrounding areas since the 1990s, therefore, it is an important social consensus to achieve coordinated development. In this paper, we analyzed the imbalanced economic development in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region by proposing a GDP Index using the DMSP/OLS nighttime light data to represent the regional economic development. Then the Getis-Ord General G, Global Moran's I and Optimized Hot Spot Analysis were applied to qualify the spatial pattern of the GDP Index. Third, Space Time Pattern Mining, Spatial Lag Model (SLM) and Spatial Error Model (SEM) were employed to identify the dynamics of the spatial pattern and evaluate the effects of four factors, which were natural environment (elevation and gradient), infrastructure (road network), policy (land use cover) and administrative division (urban or rural area), to the imbalance in the economy, respectively. Results show that: (1) the study area can be divided into three groups based on the level of economic development: urban Beijing-Tianjin, rural Beijing-Tianjin and urban Hebei, and rural Hebei. And there are two economic development gaps caused by Siphon Effect between urban and rural Beijing-Tianjin, and Beijing-Tianjin and Hebei, which is different from the previous view that only one economic development gap between Beijing-Tianjin and Hebei. (2) The dynamics of spatial pattern of economic development are mainly constant hot spot, fluctuant hot spot and fluctuant cold spot. The degree of hot spot, which is mostly in Beijing-Tianjin, decreases from urban center to rural area as concentric circles. In contrast, the majority of cold spots, which have no obvious ring structure, are located in rural Hebei. (3) The economic development in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region has non-linear relationship with natural environment, infrastructure, policy and administrative division. In the hot spot region where the economy is more developed, all four factors, especially infrastructure, policy and administrative division, are positively correlated with economic development. However, high gradient, insufficient infrastructure and improper policy limit the economic development in the place with less developed economy, i.e. the cold spot region. This research may be helpful to understand the process and current conditions of economic development in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, and useful to realize coordinated development in this region.

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    Zhi XIAO, Xianjin HUANG, Hao MENG, Yang ZHAO
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    Understanding of the regional changes of production layout of tea can help the decision-making for a better strategy of tea production in China. In this paper, we analyze the spatial-temporal distribution of tea plantation acreage, tea yield, well-known tea yield, tea production value and the well-known tea value using the GIS technology and gravity center theory. Moreover, we discuss the driving forces of the dynamic evolution of their centers of gravity. The results indicate that there are evident regional differences in China's tea production. Four regional tea production centers (Southwest China tea area: Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan; Jiangnan tea area: Hubei and Zhejiang; Southern China tea area: Fujian; Jiangbei tea area: Henan) have been formed. Fujian, Yunnan and Zhejiang provinces are major regions of tea industry in China. The change of tea production center of gravity in China shows a trend of westward movement on the whole. Although there are some differences in the paths of different indicator centers of gravity, westward movement of the center of tea production is a foregone conclusion. The tea garden area gravity centers move toward the northwest. The output of normal tea and well-known tea gravity centers move toward the southwest. The tea production value and well-known tea production value gravity centers move toward the northwest as a whole. In terms of the moving range and moving speed, the tea production value and famous tea production value gravity centers are lagging behind the output of normal tea and the well-known tea gravity centers shift. On the transfer path of the center of gravity, the size of the center of gravity of some properties, such as tea production, can directly reflect the size of the growth of the attribute in the moving region. There are several factors that affect the spatial-temporal change of tea production center of gravity. First, the government attaches great importance to the development of the tea industry and strongly support the expansion of the tea plantation acreage in China. Second, the optimization of product structure, the increase of proportion of the clonal tea plantation acreage, standardized production and popularity of mechanization are the important reasons for the growth of production of normal tea and the well-known tea. Third, the added value of normal tea and the well-known tea are mainly resulted from the expansion of the scale of tea industry and the brand management.

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    Xiongfei LIANG, Jie YIN, Bin YANG, Zheng SONG
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    Carl O. Sauer pointed out that environmental response was nothing more than a specific cultural option with regard to the habitat at a particular time. Cultural landscape is derived from the environmental response of cultural groups in specific areas, which reflects the most basic survival needs of human beings. Settlement defense is a kind of environmental response which is faced with external threats. The consciousness of defense has a profound influence on settlements. Kaiping Diaolou was a kind of defensive building in dispersed settlements with its unique geographical characteristics and spatial pattern. It provided the necessary defensive function for Kaiping settlements during the period of unrest. Evolution of pattern is one of the most important research topics in settlement geography. For Kaiping settlements, the construction of Kaiping Diaolou had reconstructed the existing settlement pattern and formed the defensive functional pattern. The research of defensive functional pattern is a necessary precondition for understanding the process of the environmental response of Kaiping settlements. This paper takes Kaiping Diaolou as the main object of study. Based on mathematical statistics and spatial econometric analysis, it reveals the spatial-temporal characteristics and defensive functional pattern of Kaiping settlements. This study has shown several conclusions as below: (1) In overall distribution, the characteristic of watch towers' agglomeration was quite different from communal towers and residential towers. Watch towers was relatively dispersed and developed a plurality of agglomeration in the county. (2) According to the characteristics of the village, traffic, terrain and banditry, the defensive functional units could be divided into three types: Inland-Defensive Functional Type, Traffic-Defensive Functional Type and Zone-Defensive Functional Type. (3) The development of defensive functional pattern could be divided into four stages: starting, molding, maturity and stable stages. (4) The evolution of settlement defensive functional pattern was summarized as follows: from "scattered points spreading" in the starting stage to "multiple points gathering" in the molding stage, and finally formed the "one core-three belts" defensive functional pattern in the maturity stage.

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    Jinling TIAN, De WANG, Dongcan XIE, Wei ZHU
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    Commuting features which are of great significance in urban Study have long been concerned. Due to the lack of information about working place in Chinese census data, researches on this topic have relied on traditional data such as questionnaire data in a rather long time. As a result, studies on temporal-spatial commuting characteristics are not refined enough yet. The development of information and communication provides new data, concepts and methods for commuting study, which offers an opportunity for a more comprehensive and in-depth understanding of commuting features. Using the cellphone signaling data within two consecutive weeks in 2014 in Shanghai, China, this paper selects three typical employment areas, which are Zhangjiang Hi-tech Park, Jinqiao Economic Development Zone as well as Lujiazui Finance and Trade Zone to analyze the commuting features respectively and comparatively from four aspects: employment and residence, spatial commuting features, temporal commuting features and commuting by subway. The results show that: (1) Zhangjiang is relatively well self-balanced with the shortest commuting distance; employees here live close to their working place and over a half of them live just in the Park. (2) Jinqiao, having few housing supplies inside and poor rail transportation condition, is typical single-employment; many employees here live surrounding the Zone. (3) Lujiazui, with a rather high proportion of employees live in the central city, is city-interactive; although the inner commuting is still a small part and the commuting distance is not very short, employees here can commute quite conveniently in general. How the six main factors, which are location, transportation condition, scale, industry types as well as land use inside and nearby, contribute to different types of employment areas is then discussed. The results can be instructive for the planning and construction of employment areas. Corresponding planning suggestions are put forward for different patterns of employment areas in the end. For self-balanced ones, increasing supporting facilities inside, such as schools, hospitals and shops, rather than houses only may be more attractive for living. Regarding the single-employment ones, the internal and external public transport links should be mainly enhanced. As for those city-interactive, improving the spatial quality and arousing the regional vitality may be the most important.

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    Yahua WANG, Yuan YUAN, Yingli WANG, Xiaolin ZHANG, Weifeng QIAO
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    Urbanization has developed rapidly in China since the reform and opening-up, while for its promotion to the socioeconomic increase and development, there has been uncoordination between population and land urbanization, and the interaction mechanism of urbanization has also become more and more complicated. This paper, taking Jiangsu province as an example, analyzes the relationship and extent of coupling development between population and land urbanization by co-integration theory and autoregression model. The results indicate that: (1) Population urbanization took a positive promotion to land urbanization in the first decade (1991-2000), and the promotion reduced relatively in the second decade (2001-2010); On the contrary, the effect of land urbanization on population urbanization has enhanced obviously from the first decade to the second. (2) Furthermore, AR model evaluates the relationship of land and population urbanization quantitatively in different periods. With a 1% increase in population urbanization, there is a 1.5% increase in land urbanization in the first decade, and the figure falls to 1.03% in the second decade; On the other hand, with a 1% increase in land urbanization, the number is (0.4390+0.3410)% in the first decade, and up to (0.9097+0.4131)% in the second decade (0.9097 means the regression coefficient of the explanatory variable, and 0.4131 means the regression coefficient of standard deviation, according to the adjusted AR model). (3) Thirdly, this paper explains the reduced effect of population urbanization in the following three aspects: developing stage, driving force and regulatory policies; As well as the enhanced effect of land urbanization in the other three aspects: agglomeration, transfer and hysteresis. In conclusion, the results not only reveal the mechanism of coupling interaction between population and land urbanization, but also enrich the complex system theory of urbanization, and provide scientific basis for the human-environment interaction in the era of rapid urbanization.

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    Haitao MA
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    As one of the important contents of urban geography, regional urban spatial organization is turning from the traditional city system research to the city networks research. There are two methods to construct city networks. One is using the relational data including the goods flow, capital flow, information flow, population flow among the city to construct city networks; the other one is building models to simulate the relationship between the city, such as interlocking network model and the gravity model. Inspired by the view of the "a spatial dynamic that changes whenever actors move in space" proposed by Menzel, this paper attempts to construct the city networks by using returnees' movement between cities. First, this paper discusses the theoretical relationship between talent mobility and city network. Relational economic geography uses the idea of "based on construction of individual relationship " into network analysis, evolutionary economic geography puts forward the thought of "dynamic proximity", and the research of early uses mobility of talents of high technology to measure the relationship between cities. These had laid a theoretical foundation for the construction of the city network based on the flow of talents movement. Then, we establish the conceptual framework of "triangle model of Chinese returnees". The returnees have the fellow villager's relationship resources in their native places, the classmates' relationship resources in overseas cities and the coworkers' relationship resources in the work city, and these are used in the analysis framework. By integrating the migration data of the returnees, we establish the cities' connections based on the flow of talent, and design a method to calculate the city connectivity. Finally, we select 6 high-end returnees of an innovative team in China to carry out a case analysis. Through the mining of the returnees' city resumes, we successfully construct the city network composed of six talents. As a result, it is suggested that: (1) city innovation network should be examined at national scale under global perspective, and the returnees are good carriers in such researches; (2) the "triangular model" reflects Chinese characteristics, which can explain the formation mechanism of city innovation network better; (3) the returnees team in Beta Pharma Co., Ltd is a typical case that it successfully facilitates inter-city innovation cooperation; and the "triangular model" framework provides a brand-new perspective and analytical method to further research on city innovation network. It should be noted that this paper focuses on theory construction and method exploration, and it needs to use a great quantity returnees' data to carry out systematic research on urban network in the next step, in order to make a greater contribution to urban network theory and the strategy of talents creative practice.

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    Feng SUN, Degen WANG, Yu NIU
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    After comparing the preference of transportation at different distances before and after high-speed rail opened, the paper discovers high-speed rail produces great impacts on highways and aviation markets in the distance ranges of 100-300 km and 700-1000 km, respectively. Then the paper further explores the competition patterns between high-speed rail and highways and high-speed rail and aviation by applying the Logit model and analyzing data indicators of typical air routes. The results show that: (1) the market boundary distance between high-speed rail and highways is 152 km; (2) the market boundary distance between high-speed rail and aviation is 633 km; (3) the general laws of the influence of high-speed rail on aviation routes are as follows: first of all, the impact of simultaneously established high-speed rails on aviation routes is greater than that of sectionally established ones. Secondly, routes between cities with large transport hubs are most likely to be affected by high-speed rail with the "Matthew effect". Thirdly, routes between cities with flourishing trade, well-developed tourism or those influenced by topography are more likely to withstand the impacts brought by high-speed rail. Fourthly, longitudinal routes are affected more than lateral ones. At last, based on these conclusions, the paper puts forward measures that should be taken by highways and air transportation systems in order to provide reference for the construction and improvement of a national modern integrated transport system.

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    Guojun ZENG, Rurui LU
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    In the process of globalized consumption, multinational corporations have accelerated overseas expansion. Retail industry is the most typical case. With production turned from Fordism to post-Fordism, multinational corporations in retail industry are more inclined to lie in the consumer sites. They sell standardized product to the rest of the world through foreign direct investment as well as foreign trade, and gradually formed a unified global production and sales network. At the same time, the embedded consumption patterns and lifestyles in the consumer product have a direct impact on consumer preferences and choices around the world. With the gradual implementation of the opening-up policy in China's retail industry, the multinational retail corporations distributed quickly to strengthen their localization process in China. From the perspectives of expansion scale and strategy, KFC, McDonald's, Haagen-Dazs, Starbucks and other multinational corporations are most typical in F&B industry. In their expansion to China, these multinational corporations in F&B industry need to consider not only the economic and cultural advantages among cities, but also the differences among commercial locations within the city. However, few reports in the literature relates to the overseas location choice of the multinational corporations in F&B industry. This paper discusses the spatial distribution, influencing factors and expansion mode based on the sample of 1446 Starbucks subsidiaries in the mainland of China with the methods of spatial analysis and regression. The results show that: (1) Starbucks exhibits a non-equilibrium and aggregated distribution mode. Its expansion path gradually extends from the coastal well-developed areas to inland provinces, which echoes to the implementation of the opening-up policy in retail industry. At the same time, it shows that the cultural system and economic factors greatly influence the expansion mode. (2) Under the dimensions of economy, space, information and humanities, indicators of market demand, purchasing power, price level, retail market conditions, transportation accessibility, commerce prosperity, the level of development of communication facilities, information networks and regional economic openness are closely related to the location choice of Starbuck stores. (3) The expansion mode of Starbucks is not the typical contagious diffusion model in service enterprises, but shows the hierarchical diffusion and contagious diffusion mixed mode. The study finds that the expansion of Starbucks has undergone three stages: hierarchical diffusion, mixed mode, and contagious diffusion.