Guest Editors' Words

• Published date: 01 July 2022
• Author: Binkai Chen,Ming Lu
• Date: 01 July 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/cwe.12425

China & World Economy / 1–3, Vol. 30, No. 4, 2022 1

©2022 Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Guest Editors’ Words

Binkai Chen, Ming Lu*1

There are two reasons why we launched a special issue on spatial political economy.

First, China is a big country in which many major problems are related to regional

economies. Second, China still has some institutional features inherited from the planned

economy period in the production factor market, and it has not yet fully realized the free

allocation of production factors across the regions. Therefore, when looking at many

economic problems especially regional development issues in China, we need to realize

the existence of strong impact of economy of scale and agglomeration economy. We also

need to understand the impact of political economy issues on resource allocation. The

nine papers in this special issue show the importance of the spatial political economy

perspective in different discussion. Four key takeaways are as follows.

First, population density and geography still matter. People often ignore the

influence of population density on policy. Zhang and Rozelle (2022) found that the

policy of providing universal education in rural areas was more effective in areas with

high population density. The paper by Li and Zhu (2022) is very important in explaining

the path dependence of cities. In the current period, when China’s development is

dominated by “internal circulation”, which means GDP does not rely on net export

that much as before, many people believe that the importance of ports in coastal areas

will decline. This paper fi nds that ports are accelerating the development of producer

services, so they are continuing to have an impact on economic geography.

Second, connectivity helps. Zheng, Li and Zhao (2022) found that the opening of

high-speed rail has promoted the issuance of local government bonds in remote and

high-growth areas. Although interregional connectivity is important, connectivity within

regions also helps a lot. The paper by Wang, Liu, Zhang and Hu (2022) is a valuable

study of the internal economics of cities. They found that the opening of the subway

helped to promote the diffusion of knowledge. However, it only enabled enterprises

within 1 km around the subway station to enjoy this knowledge diffusion. The subway

connection is also conducive to the enterprises along the subway experiencing

knowledge diffusion from other local enterprises.

*Binkai Chen, Professor, School of Economics, Central University of Finance and Economics, China. Email:

chenbinkai@cufe.edu.cn. Ming Lu, Professor, Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao

Tong University, China. Email: luming1973@sjtu.edu.cn.