Regional allocation of industrial land in industrializing China: does spatial mismatch exist?

Abstract

Understanding how industrial land is spatially allocated across regions is crucial for formulating more optimised land policies and regional development strategies, especially in industrialising countries. By exploiting a unique county-level cadastral dataset covering the whole China from 2009 to 2018, this paper analyzes the spatiotemporal allocation of industrial land and the potential spatial mismatch in China. We find that industrial land constituted the largest single type of urban land use in China (27%) and its absolute area and allocative share expanded during the period 2009–2018. Both the incremental and the stock of the industrial land were mainly concentrated in the coastal metropolitan regions but with a greater tendency to allocate more industrial land in inland regions. Further, we provide robust evidence of the existence of a spatial mismatch of industrial land allocation across Chinese counties, although the efficiency of regional allocations did not deteriorate over time.

Keywords:

• Industrial land
• spatial allocation
• spatial mismatch
• cadastral data
• China

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Professor Xianlei Ma from Nanjing Agricultural University, the three anonymous referees, and Emma Waterton for their helpful comments on earlier versions of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 A county is the third level in the administrative division in China, which is lower than the provincial and the prefectural (city) level.

2 Coastal China includes the provinces of Beijing, Tianjin, Liaoning, Hebei, Shandong, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong and Hainan; Inland China consists of Shanxi, Henan, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan, Heilongjiang and Jilin Shanxi, Henan, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan, Heilongjiang and Jilin, Inner Mongolia, Chongqing, Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan, Xizang, Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, and Xinjiang.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant [72074116 and 72204108], Innovation Foundation of Jiangsu Province under Grant [JSSCBS20210443], and Department of Education of Jiangsu Province under Grant [2021SJA0297].

Notes on contributors

Aidong Zhao

Aidong Zhao is a lecturer at Nanjing University of Finance and Economics, China. He obtained his doctoral degree in 2020 at Radboud University (Netherlands) where he completed a dissertation on the study of government intervention in industrial land use in China. His research interests focus on evaluating the economic performance of land use regulations in China, more specifically the industrial land policies in industrialisation process, but also on land allocation, and land use change.

Jinsheng Huang

Jinsheng Huang is a lecturer at the Anhui University of Technology, China. His research focuses on industrial land landscape and land management.

Fugang Gao

Fugang Gao is a fourth-year PhD student at the Department of Geography, Environment and Planning of Radboud University, the Netherlands. His research focuses on urban planning and its relationships in urban environments.

Hao Meng

Hao Meng is a lecturer at Nanjing University of Finance and Economics. His research emphasises land planning and their implications for urban management.

Chong Peng

Chong Peng is an associate professor in the School of Economics at the Nanjing Audit University, China. His research interests include urban and regional economics.