Regional specialization: a measure method and the trends in China

This paper elaborates on a method of measuring regional specialization and examines the trend of regional specialization in China, 1987 - 2007. It constructs a simple coefficient incorporating the effect of regional industrial scale, based on location quotients, and then measures the regional specialization of China using official statistical data. The results indicate a remarkable increase in China’s overall regional specialization during this time, as well as obvious regional and industrial differences, i.e., that the regional specialization of eastern coastal China is relatively less than that of the inland. Findings further demonstrate that special-resource-dependent industries are concentrated in regions with resource endowment, whereas industries with strong technical barriers are mainly located in regions with strong research and innovation ability.