Prof. JIN Fengjun, and his research team at Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research(IGSNRR), CAS , has engaged in analyzing and evaluating the major issues of China’s regional development. Recently, their paper ,”China’s regional transport dominance: Density, proximity, and accessibility” is published in Journal of Geographical Sciences 2010.

This paper defines transport dominance from three aspects: quality, quantity, and advantage, measured by density, proximity, and accessibility indices. County is the basic unit for analysis.

The results reveal: (1) Transport dominance statistically follows a partial normal distribution. A very few counties, 1.4% of the total, have extremely high transport dominance which strongly supports the socio-economic development in these areas. In contrast, one eighth of all counties have poor transport dominance which impedes local socio-economic development to some extent. The remaining areas, about 70% of the counties, have median transport dominance. (2) Transport dominance is spatially unevenly distributed, with values decreasing gradually from the coastal area to the inland area. Areas in the first-highest level of transport dominance are mainly concentrated in the Yangtze River Delta, the Greater Beijing area, and the Pearl River Delta. Areas in the second-highest level are focused in Chengdu, Chongqing, and Wuhan metropolitan areas. Provincial capitals and a few other counties belong to the third-highest level.