Club Convergence and Spatial Effect on Green Development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt in China with Markov Chains Approach

Abstract

The Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) is one of four major national development strategies in China, accomplishing the balance between protection and development of YREB has long-term and comprehensive significance to the implementation of China’s green development concept. This paper aims to have a more comprehensive understanding of the green development level of 126 cities in YREB from 2008 to 2017 by constructing an innovative evaluation system of “capacity level-coordination level-comprehensive level”. And on this basis, further analysis is carried out to check whether there is spatial effect in green development by means of the Markov chain. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) Urban green development comprehensive level in YREB is characterized by convergence, and the convergence phenomenon is more prominent in high-level cities; (2) In general, the distribution of high-value cities is decreasing from east to west; (3) The transition of club convergence is significantly influenced by neighbor background. Overall, the YREB is undergoing a transformation to step into the greener development path, still needs to take a series of synergistic guidance strategies to solve the problem of unbalanced regional development.