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Geography, Ethnicity and Regional Inequality in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China

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Abstract

This paper analyzes regional inequality in Western China through a case study of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region from 1989 to 2012. We have found a recent trend of increasing county-level inequality, in which the distribution of regional inequality has changed from a single peak to a bimodal pattern. Based on the multi-mechanism framework, we have revealed that geographic environment and ethnic characteristics have had a large impact on the economic development of Guangxi. Spatiality, investment and industrialization play an additional important role in regional development; meanwhile, globalization and decentralization play a minor role. Building on the semiparametric geoadditive models, our investigation detects nonlinear relationships between geography, ethnicity and local development. We then assess the relative performance of infrastructure and market potential to control for unobserved spatial heterogeneity.

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Notes

  1. Due to the lack of FDI statistical data, gross output value of industrial enterprises above the designated size of Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and other countries to the total population in each county is used to reflect the extent and impact of globalization.

  2. The Moran scatter plot was developed to assess local instability in spatial association. The four quadrants in the scatter plot correspond to different types of spatial correlation. Spatial outliers are in the upper right (high-high, HH) and lower left (low-low, LL) quadrants, and spatial clusters are in the lower right (high-low, HL) and upper left (low-high, LH) quadrants. HH denotes high values surrounded by high values and LL indicates low values surrounded by low values, etc.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41329001) and Humanities and Social Science Foundation of Ministry of Education in China (17XJC790001).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics & Management, Guangxi Normal University, Guilin, 541004, China

    Qiwen Dai & Xinyue Ye

  2. Department of Geography, Kent State University, Kent, OH, 44240, USA

    Xinyue Ye

  3. Department of Geography, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, 84112, USA

    Yehua Dennis Wei

  4. Center for Modern Chinese City Studies, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200062, China

    Yuemin Ning

  5. School of Economics and Management and Resources Environmental Economic Research Center, China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), Wuhan, Hubei, 430074, China

    Sheng Dai

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  1. Qiwen Dai
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Correspondence to Xinyue Ye.

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Dai, Q., Ye, X., Wei, Y.D. et al. Geography, Ethnicity and Regional Inequality in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China. Appl. Spatial Analysis 11, 557–580 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12061-017-9229-3

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