Spatial Club Convergence of Regional Economic Growth in Inland China

Spatial club convergence is a group of regions which are adjacent to each other in space and have similar initial conditions and structural features while converging towards the same steady state in the economic development. Based on the Solow model, this paper builds a theoretical model to prove the mechanism of spatial club convergence. The spatial club convergence process is explored in inland China, using the case of the Zhongyuan urban agglomeration during the years of 1993–2009. This region has been experiencing a dramatic economic development and serves as an ideal test bed of the theory of spatial club convergence. The results show that in the two periods of 1993–1999, and 1993–2009, there was spatial club convergence in the 56 regions of Zhongyuan urban agglomeration of China. The respective convergence rates were 2.0% and 1.0%. Hence, both theoretical deduction and empirical studies verify the hypothesis of spatial club convergence.