世界遗产是极其宝贵的旅游资源,其空间分布对区域旅游流格局产生着重要影响。分析中国世界遗产的分布状况,揭示其空间分布特征及规律,能够为我国世界遗产的申报、管理和保护规划提供科学依据。本文运用空间结构分析方法,从全国范围、省际、南北、东中西不同地域,以及腾冲－黑河线等尺度研究中国世界遗产的宏观地域分异。研究表明:中国世界遗产具有明显地域特征,空间格局表现出明显的组团状特征,大致可以分为北京及周边、黄河中下游、长江中下游平原及西南地区四大斑块;省域分布不均衡,全国只有北京、辽宁、四川等22个省份拥有世界遗产,其中北京以6处世界遗产位居全国首位;从南北方看,南方世界遗产地面积、遗产分布密度均大于北方,自然遗产主要分布在南方;从东中西部来看,均有世界遗产,但东部和中部地区明显多于西部地区;从人口地理分界线看,世界遗产主要分布于东南侧人口密集地区,西北地区则分布较少。各种角度的空间分布特征均与自然环境、社会历史、经济活动等诸多因素有密切关系。

World Heritage is precious tourist attractions, which has an important influence on their spatial distribution pattern of regional tourism in China. This paper compares spatial distribution of China's world heritages on various scales, and reveals the spatial distribution features, which can provide scientific basis for applying new world heritage to be inscribed in the List and managing current heritage sites. We carry out a study of macro-regional differentiation on 38 world heritage sites in China based on spatial structure analysis, in terms of sizes from the national, provincial, south and north, eastern, central and western regions and the Huhuanyong population line. The results are obtained as follows. 1) World heritages in China are distributed in several regions, mainly in the surrounding area of Beijing, the middle and lower Yellow River, the lower Yangtze River basin and Southwest China; 2) 22 provincial regions including Beijing Municipality as well as provinces of Liaoning and Sichuan have world heritages and Beijing ranked first for 6 sites; 3) the south is prior to the north of China in terms of the area and number of the world heritages, in addition, the natural heritages are mainly distributed in the south; 4) all the east, central and western parts of China have world heritages, however, the density in eastern and central China is higher than that in western China; 5) most of the world heritages are located to the southeast of the Huhuanyong Line.