Natural City Growth in the People’s - 麻省理工学院人工智能研究专业

Natural City Growth in the People’s
Republic of China
Peter H. Egger, Gabriel Loumeau, and Nicole Püschel∗

This paper analyzes the growth of Metropolitan Statistical Areas in the PRC
之间 1992 和 2013 by focusing on the night-light radiance—a measure of
economic activity—of connected subcity places that we refer to as a natural
城市. This paper documents the rapid growth of natural cities in the PRC
之间 1992 和 2009 that was followed by a slight reduction in the size
of some natural cities between 2010 和 2013 in the aftermath of the recent
global ﬁnancial crisis. Institutional factors—such as the location of places near
Special Economic Zones, the ramiﬁcations of legal migration from rural to
urban areas following reforms to the hukou (household registration) 系统, 和
infrastructure accessibility—are found to be important drivers of the integration
of peripheral places into natural cities.

关键词: city growth, Metropolitan Statistical Areas, People’s Republic of
中国
JEL codes: O20, R12, R40

我. 介绍

With the increase in global population, the change in urbanization rates
around the world is a dynamic phenomenon. While in 1994 只关于 30% 的
the world’s population lived in cities, as deﬁned by national statistical ofﬁces, 关于
54% did in 2014.1 In the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which has been among
the most dynamic economies in the world over the last quarter of a century, almost
25% of the population has moved to urban areas during the past 2 几十年. 这
PRC’s National New-Type Urbanization Plan, 2014–2020 targets an urbanization
率 60% 经过 2020. While urbanization is often measured as the increase in the

∗Peter H. Egger (corresponding author): 教授, 苏黎世联邦理工学院, Department of Management, 技术,
and Economics; Research Fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research; and Director of Global
Economy Programme, CESifo Group. 电子邮件: egger@kof.ethz.ch; Gabriel Loumeau: 苏黎世联邦理工学院, Department of
管理, 技术, and Economics. 电子邮件: loumeau@kof.ethz.ch; Nicole Püschel: 苏黎世联邦理工学院, Department
of Management, 技术, and Economics. 电子邮件: pueschel@kof.ethz.ch. We gratefully acknowledge funding
from the Swiss National Science Foundation through project number CRSII 1_154446. We would also like to thank
the participants at the Asian Development Review Conference on Urban and Regional Development in Asia held in
Seoul in July 2016, the managing editor, and an anonymous referee for helpful comments and suggestions. 在这个
纸, the Asian Development Bank recognizes “China” as the People’s Republic of China. The usual disclaimer
applies.

1World Bank. 2015. World Development Indicators. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN

.ZS?结束=2015&locations=CN&start=1960&view=chart

Asian Development Review, 卷. 34, 不. 2, PP. 51–85

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

e
d
你
A
d
e
v
/
A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

我

F
/

3
4
2
5
1
1
6
4
4
3
4
5
A
d
e
v
_
A
_
0
0
0
9
5
p
d

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

哦
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

52 Asian Development Review

population within the administrative boundaries of cities, urbanization in a broad
sense is driven by three phenomena: (我) the increase in population density (和
经济活动) within the administrative boundaries of existing urban zones, (二)
the increase in population density (and economic activity) in areas in the vicinity
of administrative urban zones through the growth of Metropolitan Statistical Areas
(MSAs), 和 (三、) (to a lesser extent) the physical growth of the administrative areas
of cities.2 This paper focuses on the ﬁrst two phenomena, which are objects of
interest in the theoretical and empirical urban economics literature focusing on
city growth; urban sprawl, which goes hand in hand with the formation of densely
populated urban subcenters; and the decentralization of economic activity (看, 为了
例子, Fujita and Ogawa 1980, 1982; Henderson and Mitra 1996; Glaeser and
Kahn 2001, 2004; McMillen and Smith 2003; Burchﬁeld et al. 2006; Garcia-López,
Hémet, and Viladecans-Marsal 2016).

Unlike in many other countries, the recent growth of cities in the PRC has
been governed by regulations. The country’s one-child policy, which had been
instituted in its most restrictive form between 1978 和 2015, led to a slump
in overall population growth, reduced the growth rate of cities, and slowed the
average urbanization rate. 此外, the hukou (household registration) 系统
has restricted the internal migration of people to urban centers by limiting access to
public goods such as health care, 学校, 大学, and ofﬁcial housing. 最后,
the inception of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) has ensured the protection of the
private property rights of foreign investors, alleviated taxes and tariffs, regulated
the policy of land usage, and liberalized economic and labor laws in geographically
conﬁned zones. According to Wang (2013), most major cities in the PRC’s 326
municipalities hosted some sort of SEZ by 2006. A consideration of these regulatory
provisions—apart from factors capturing the economic attractiveness and amenities
in cities—appears relevant as they may lead to a gap between actual and optimal
city size in the PRC, thereby affecting the associated economies of scale and scope
(看, 例如, Au and Henderson 2006a, 2006乙; Desmet and Rossi-Hansberg
2013), which can result in potentially signiﬁcant output losses.

The PRC’s extensive investments in transport infrastructure, particularly road
and railway networks, have fundamentally reshaped the structure of its urban areas.
20世纪90年代初, the Government of the PRC began to renew and upgrade its
transport infrastructure, which caused previously underdeveloped regions to grow
faster as industries started to decentralize (Banerjee, Duﬂo, and Qian 2012; Faber
2014; Baum-Snow et al. 2016, 2017). 例如, Baum-Snow et al. (2017) 找到
that suburban ring roads have displaced an average of about 50% of central city

2The term MSA is mostly used in the context of the study of cities in the United States. In Europe, 这
literature primarily refers to a Functional Urban Area, which essentially describes the same concept of agglomerations
measured by a minimum density of the population according to census data. 在本文中, we utilize the term natural
cities to indicate something similar, though it is based on the measurement of a city by remote-sensing (night-light
radiance) data in conjunction with the City Clustering Algorithm.

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

e
d
你
A
d
e
v
/
A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

我

F
/

3
4
2
5
1
1
6
4
4
3
4
5
A
d
e
v
_
A
_
0
0
0
9
5
p
d

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

哦
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

Natural City Growth in the PRC 53

industrial gross domestic product (GDP) to the outskirts of cities, while marginal
radial railroads have displaced an additional 20%. 相似地, Baum-Snow et al.
(2016) argue that expanded regional highway networks in the PRC have had
a negative average effect on local population density, causing a reallocation of
economic activity and altering the structure of the country’s cities.

The focus of this paper is on the growth of natural cities, which are deﬁned
as connected places with a minimum level of night-light radiance as a measure of
地方- and time-speciﬁc economic activity (Henderson, Storeygard, and Weil 2012),
and which are associated with the PRC’s 300 largest administrative cities over the
period 1992–2013. One major merit of using remote-sensing data to deﬁne cities
is that such data are available at much higher frequency than population census
数据. 此外, the data collection itself is much more homogeneous in terms
of timing and concept. The data suggest that the PRC’s natural cities grew rapidly
之间 1992 和 2010 before shrinking to some extent in the last few years of
the review period, which might be attributable to the detrimental effects of the
recent global ﬁnancial crisis. We document this phenomenon for all cities in terms
of descriptive statistics and illustrate it exemplarily for two major agglomerations,
Beijing and Shanghai. This paper explores these developments using econometric
analysis and identiﬁes institutional factors—as reﬂected in the proliferation of SEZs
and the provisions of the hukou system—and infrastructure accessibility as being
important determinants of natural city growth. We highlight the effects of road and
railway accessibility, and illustrate that shocks to infrastructure can be expected to
induce relatively rapid adjustments in natural city size over the next 20 年.

The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section II introduces the
deﬁnition of a natural city employed in this paper and outlines the measurement
thereof. The data and their descriptive statistics, empirical strategy, and results are
presented in Section III. Section IV concludes.

二. Natural City Borders in the People’s Republic of China, 1992–2013

在本文中, we employ a deﬁnition of city boundaries based on what we call
natural borders. Natural city borders relate to the well-known concepts of MSAs
and Functional Urban Areas (FUAs), which measure city size by activity rather
than administrative boundaries (看, 例如, Zipf 1949; Krugman 1996; Eaton
and Eckstein 1997; 哈里斯, Dobkins, and Ioannides 2001; Ioannides and Overman
2003; Eeckhout 2004; Rozenfeld et al. 2011). A general motivation to use a city
deﬁnition based on either MSA or FUA is that they capture more accurately the
extent of urban units, going beyond (and sometimes integrating several units with)
administrative boundaries. When looking at emerging urban areas, especially in
transition economies such as the PRC, the study of MSAs and FUAs follows an
economic rather than an administrative logic. We deﬁne the boundaries of natural
cities based on the City Clustering Algorithm (CCA) (Rozenfeld et al. 2008,

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

e
d
你
A
d
e
v
/
A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

我

F
/

3
4
2
5
1
1
6
4
4
3
4
5
A
d
e
v
_
A
_
0
0
0
9
5
p
d

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

哦
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

54 Asian Development Review

数字 1. Centroids of the 300 Biggest Administrative Cities in the People’s Republic of
China by Population, 2000

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

e
d
你
A
d
e
v
/
A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

我

F
/

来源: Authors’ illustration.

Rozenfeld et al. 2011), which we apply to remote-sensing (night-light radiance) 数据
collected from satellites (Burchﬁeld et al. 2006; Henderson, Storeygard, and Weil
2012). We measure the average night-light radiance in places that are 3 kilometers
(km) in length by 3 km in width.3 We are facing a trade-off between portraying
and approximating the boundaries of small cities, especially in the early phases of
the sample period, and the tractability of the data, particularly the application of
the CCA.4 The former requires sufﬁciently small places and the latter sufﬁciently
few places. For those reasons, the consideration of 3 km × 3 km places was the
ﬁnest-grained grid we could use given the time constraints. 一般来说, one major
advantage of using remote-sensing data to deﬁne natural cities is that annual data
are available between 1992 和 2013, while MSA and FUA data are based on
population censuses and therefore only available at lower frequency.

We consider the 300 biggest administrative cities in the PRC by population in
那一年 2000.5 数字 1 shows a map of the PRC and the location of the centroids of

3Individual places in the PRC bordering water or other boundaries may be smaller in size than 3 km × 3 km.
4The distribution of city sizes in the sample is presented in Figure 5.
5A list of the 300 biggest Chinese cities by population in 2000 is presented in Table A.1. Table A.2 includes
a list of all natural cities by size in 2000. There are three different administrative levels of cities in the PRC’s urban
系统: municipalities, prefecture-level cities, and county-level cities. With regard to the empirical analysis, 我们用
administrative boundary information at the county level only. For further information on this point, please see section
III.A.

3
4
2
5
1
1
6
4
4
3
4
5
A
d
e
v
_
A
_
0
0
0
9
5
p
d

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

哦
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

Natural City Growth in the PRC 55

全部 300 cities covered. Very few cities are located in the western PRC, while there is
a particularly high density in the vicinity of the coastal belt, which is not surprising
provided the high degree of economic activity through international trade in that
区域.

The objects of interest in this study are the aforementioned 3 km × 3 km
地方. We deﬁne natural city borders on a uniform grid of such places for all
cities in the sample. On this grid, we assign a place to a natural city in a year if
(我) the average night-light radiance on the square exceeds a value of 40; 和 (二) 这是
located near a cluster of places with average night-light radiance over 40, 包括
the place that contains the city centroid (based on the CCA algorithm). We employ
Version 4 of the Defense Meteorological Satellites Program–Operational Linescan
System to measure night-light radiance at the pixel level (Croft 1978). 这
remote-sensing (night-light radiance) data therein take on values between 0 (不
光) 和 63 (maximum light). Night-light radiance data per pixel are available for
all years between 1992 和 2013 based on pictures from six different satellites (F10,
F12, F14, F15, F16, and F18), with some years covered by two satellites.6 We chose
the data such that the number of satellites they come from is minimized (F10 for
1992–1993, F12 for 1994–1999, F15 for 2000–2004, F16 for 2005–2009, and F18
for 2010–2013). The data comprise a raw-data version as well as a stable-data
version, where the latter ensures that the data are not conﬂated by ﬁre or ﬁrework
incidents, or clouds or any other weather conditions. 在本文中, 我们使用
stable-light data version and compute the mean of radiance across all pixels within
each place. In the ﬁnal data set, we include all those places that were assigned to be
in a natural city in any year between 1992 和 2013, and we track these places over
the entire review period.

人物 2 和 3 delineate the natural city with its city centroid (black dot)
and administrative boundaries for Beijing and Shanghai for the years 1992, 1998,
2007, 和 2013. In every panel, gray grids represent places that constitute the
natural city in that particular year. Prefecture-level administrative city boundaries
are indicated in black.7 In the case of Beijing, we observe that its natural city size
grew remarkably over the entire sample period. Especially from 1998 向前, 这
natural city of Beijing grew outward toward the northeast, which could be partly
related to the 1993 opening of the Airport Expressway linking central Beijing to
the Beijing Capital International Airport. Additional infrastructure investments to
improve airport connectivity (例如, Airport Express Subway) in preparation for the
2008 Olympic Games may have also contributed to the northeast developing more
rapidly than other parts of Beijing.

6The satellite identiﬁers correspond to those used by the Defense Meteorological Satellites Program. 为了
further information, please see National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Earth Observation Group.
https://ngdc.noaa.gov/eog/dmsp/downloadV4composites.html

7人物 2 和 3 show prefecture-level administrative boundaries. 然而, in the estimation, all variables
that include information on administrative boundaries rely on county-level boundaries as those boundaries represent
the city-size distribution in a better way than prefecture-level boundaries.

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

e
d
你
A
d
e
v
/
A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

我

F
/

3
4
2
5
1
1
6
4
4
3
4
5
A
d
e
v
_
A
_
0
0
0
9
5
p
d

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

哦
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

56 Asian Development Review

数字 2. Natural City and Administrative Borders over Time—Beijing

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

e
d
你
A
d
e
v
/
A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

我

F
/

3
4
2
5
1
1
6
4
4
3
4
5
A
d
e
v
_
A
_
0
0
0
9
5
p
d

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

哦
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

来源: Authors’ illustration.

Similar to Beijing, Shanghai’s natural city grew over the entire review period
and mostly integrated urban areas along the downstream part of the Yangtze River.
The example of Shanghai illustrates that, especially toward the end of the review
时期, several administrative cities merged into one natural supercity. The natural
city of Shanghai in 1992 contained only one administrative centroid, while by 2013
it had incorporated a number of formerly distinct administrative and natural cities
along the Yangtze River into one natural supercity. 然而, in spite of the general
growth of natural cities through 2007–2013, many natural cities, including Beijing
and Shanghai, shrank between 2010 和 2013, most likely as a consequence of the
global ﬁnancial crisis (数字 4).

桌子 1 reports average unconditional transition probabilities for natural city
places for the whole sample of places considered. The table suggests that there is
a high degree of persistence from 1 year to another: 92% of all natural city places
keep their status, while about 90% of all places outside the natural city boundary
remain outside that boundary from 1 year to another. The probability of acquiring
natural city status amounts to 10%, while losing natural city status occurs in 7% 的

Natural City Growth in the PRC 57

数字 3. Natural City and Administrative Borders over Time—Shanghai

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

e
d
你
A
d
e
v
/
A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

我

F
/

3
4
2
5
1
1
6
4
4
3
4
5
A
d
e
v
_
A
_
0
0
0
9
5
p
d

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

哦
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

来源: Authors’ illustration.

数字 4. Shrinking Natural Cities, 2010–2013—Beijing and Shanghai

来源: Authors’ illustration.

58 Asian Development Review

桌子 1. Transition Matrix

目标
Nat = 1 Nat = 0

Origin Nat = 0
Nat = 1
全部的

10.06
92.63
39.65

Nat = natural city.
来源: 作者的计算.

89.94
7.37
60.35

全部的

100
100
100

数字 5. Kernel Density Estimates of Natural City Size across Cities

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

e
d
你
A
d
e
v
/
A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

我

F
/

3
4
2
5
1
1
6
4
4
3
4
5
A
d
e
v
_
A
_
0
0
0
9
5
p
d

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

哦
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

来源: 作者的计算.

all cases from 1 year to another. The latter development is almost entirely driven
by transitions during 2010–2013, reﬂecting the PRC’s economic downturn in the
aftermath of the global ﬁnancial crisis.

Per Table 1, the average natural city size is expected to grow over the sample
时期. 数字 5 draws kernel density estimates of natural city sizes for the years
1992, 1998, 2007, 和 2013. In each of the four panels of Figure 5, the horizontal
axis shows the number of 3 km × 3 km places in a natural city. We observe that the
average natural city size, reﬂected in the total number of places covered, 增加
remarkably with time. Especially in the beginning of the review period, the density
mass is concentrated in the left tail of the distribution, indicating a great number of

Natural City Growth in the PRC 59

relatively small natural cities and only a small number of very large supercities
in the sample. Later in the review period, the degree of dispersion in terms of
natural city size increases and the density mass in the left tail of the distribution
gets smaller.

三、. Drivers of Natural City Growth

在这个部分, we introduce all variables included in the subsequent

empirical analysis.

数据

We use average (night-light) radiance data in a 3 km × 3 km place i at
period t as the dependent variable to measure economic activity in that area. 这
variable radianceit is continuous and censored from below as well as from above,
范围从 0 (no light) 到 63 (maximum light). Information on the source and the
processing of the radiance data can be found in section II.

We identify three key categories of variables that drive natural city growth:
geographical, 气候, and institutional. The geographical variables include distance
措施, some of which are time variant (indexed by both i and t) and others that
不是 (indexed by i only): distance to the administrative city center (dist to centeri),
distance to the administrative city border (dist to adborderit), distance to the nearest
waterway (dist to wateri), distance to the ocean (dist to oceani), distance to the
nearest road (dist to roadi), and distance to the nearest railway line (dist to raili). 这
geographical variables include a binary indicator that is unity if a place lies within
the administrative boundary of the city centroid and zero otherwise (within admin
boundaryit). Except for dist to adborderit and within admin boundaryit, which utilize
annual data on administrative boundaries (at the county level) from the China Data
Center at the University of Michigan, all distances are taken from OpenStreetMap
using ArcGIS software.8 Furthermore, we utilize topological information in the
form of a measurement of altitude (altitudei) from WorldClim Global Climate Data,
and we control for the geographical location of each centroid by using information
on its longitude and latitude from ArcGIS. The reason for including the latter two is
that they relate to a place’s accessibility. 例如, Chinese cities near the coast
grew faster due to better accessibility to sea transport, which attracted foreign direct
investment and was further stimulated by the formation of SEZs.

We use the following time-invariant climate data: average annual rainfall
during the period of observation (raini); average annual temperature (temperaturei);

8OpenStreetMap information is based on the most recent network information available only. Distance to
the nearest road includes all types of different roads (例如, private roads, lower-capacity highways, higher-capacity
highways, and limited-access highways). Distance to the nearest railway line includes all types of railway lines (例如,
subway lines and interprovincial railway lines).

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

e
d
你
A
d
e
v
/
A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

我

F
/

3
4
2
5
1
1
6
4
4
3
4
5
A
d
e
v
_
A
_
0
0
0
9
5
p
d

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

哦
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

60 Asian Development Review

and average annual temperature variation (sd temperaturei, as measured by the
标准差). Gridded climate data are available from WorldClim Global
Climate Data.

The institutional variables represent two types of institutional changes that
governed the PRC’s urban growth: reforms in the hukou system and the formation
of SEZs. Between the late 1970s and mid-2000s, a period which is referred to as
the ﬁrst wave of hukou reforms, restrictions on movement and work were eased,
which led to a large inﬂow of rural workers into urban areas. In most provinces, 这
scale of reforms varied with city size. 一般来说, reforms have had little impact on
institutions in the most attractive urban areas such as provincial capitals and large
cities along the coastal belt. To capture the different effects, we introduce three
binary indicators—smallit, mediumit, and largeit—which are unity if a province
applied their latest hukou reforms to small, medium, or large cities, 分别,
and zero otherwise. A combined effect of these reforms is captured in the binary
indicator hukouit, which is unity if any one of the three, two out of three, or all
three city-size variables are unity, and zero otherwise. Time-variant information on
the extent of the latest hukou reforms by province during the period 1998–2008 is
available in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2013).

SEZs are geographic regions that are typically characterized by liberal
economic policies designed to attract foreign investors and enhance economic
活动. 在本文中, we use the term SEZ as a generic term for all types of
special economic zones and open areas, including Free Trade Zones, 经济的
and Technology Development Zones, and open coastal cities, 除其他外.
王 (2013) characterizes four big waves in the formation of SEZs in the PRC
(1979–1985, 1986–1990, 1991–1995, and 1996–2007) and lists the corresponding
municipalities that were designated as SEZs in each of the ﬁrst three waves.
This allows us to code three different binary indicator variables (ﬁrstwaveit,
secondwaveit, and thirdwaveit) of which the former two are time variant because
of the time variation in administrative city boundaries. The third variable is time
variant because in our coding there is no treatment of places and cities prior to
1995. We also include the combined effect of the three waves that is captured in
the binary indicator SEZit, which is unity if any one of the three, two of the three,
or all three SEZ wave indicator variables are unity, and zero otherwise. 自从
information on SEZs provided in Wang (2013) pertains to the municipality level,
and while data utilized here vary by place, we assume that all places within the
treated municipalities were affected by SEZs in the same way.

As an additional control variable, we include the population density

(popdensi1990) 在 1990.9

9Gridded population density data for 1990 经过 2.5 arc-minute grid cells are available from the Socioeconomic

Data and Applications Center.

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

e
d
你
A
d
e
v
/
A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

我

F
/

3
4
2
5
1
1
6
4
4
3
4
5
A
d
e
v
_
A
_
0
0
0
9
5
p
d

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

哦
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

Natural City Growth in the PRC 61

桌子 2. Summary Statistics—Inside and Outside Natural City and Total

Nat = 1

Nat = 0

Average

意思是

标清

意思是

标清

意思是

标清

Geography
dist to roadi (km)
dist to raili (km)
dist to oceani (km)
dist to wateri (km)
dist to centeri (km)
dist to adborderit (km)
within admin boundaryit
altitudei (米)
longitudei
latitudei

气候
raini (毫米)
temperaturei (°C)
sd temperaturei (°C)

hukouit
smallit
mediumit
largeit

SEZit
ﬁrstwaveit
secondwaveit
thirdwaveit
popdensi1990 (ppl/km2)
radiancei1992
radianceit (0–63)

0.23
2.50
261.61
1.65
12.39
3.15
0.33
152.40
116.30
33.47

0.32
3.26
413.37
1.94
9.60
3.07
0.47
327.50
6.94
7.03

0.37
4.05
293.31
2.17
17.28
3.76
0.26
176.30
116.30
33.65

0.44
4.68
426.36
2.45
11.48
3.35
0.44
359.70
7.19
6.31

0.32
3.46
281.14
2.00
15.40
3.52
0.29
167.10
116.30
33.58

0.40
4.26
421.70
2.28
11.06
3.26
0.45
347.90
7.10
6.59

95.37
14.52
9.13

47.32
5.40
2.72

92.17
14.24
9.23

41.83
4.93
2.48

93.40
14.35
9.19

44.04
5.12
2.57

0.69
0.65
0.56
0.54

0.69
0.04
0.46
0.39

0.46
0.48
0.50
0.50

0.46
0.19
0.50
0.49

0.38
0.37
0.30
0.29

0.54
0.02
0.37
0.27

0.48
0.48
0.46
0.45

0.50
0.14
0.48
0.45

0.50
0.48
0.40
0.39

0.60
0.03
0.41
0.32

0.50
0.50
0.49
0.49

0.49
0.16
0.49
0.47

1,209
29.67
53.93

1,837
17.79
6.95

812
13.02
21.78

775
8.93
11.58

964
19.41
34.12

1,305
15.37
18.59

观察结果

266,613

166,061

432,674

°C = degree Celsius, km = kilometer, m = meter, mm = millimeter, Nat = natural city, 标准差=
标准差, ppl/km2 = people per square kilometer, SEZ = Special Economic Zone.
来源: 作者的计算.

乙.

Descriptive Statistics

桌子 2 summarizes the descriptive features of all variables by natural city
地位 (within a natural city, Nat = 1; outside of a natural city, Nat = 0; Average),
and reports the mean and standard deviation for each variable.

桌子 2 indicates that places within a natural city are on average 1.4 次
closer to the city centroid than places outside of a natural city. 相似地, 地方
inside are 1.1 times closer to the coast, 1.3 times closer to waterways, 1.6 次
closer to the nearest road, 和 1.6 times closer to the nearest railway line. 作为
预期的, places are on average much closer to the nearest road (0.3 km) than to
the nearest railway line (3.5 km). We also observe that places inside a natural city
are closer to the nearest administrative border since administrative areas close to the

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

e
d
你
A
d
e
v
/
A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

我

F
/

3
4
2
5
1
1
6
4
4
3
4
5
A
d
e
v
_
A
_
0
0
0
9
5
p
d

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

哦
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

62 Asian Development Review

桌子 3. Summary Statistics—Averages for 1992, 1998, 2007, 和 2013

hukouit
smallit
mediumit
largeit

SEZit
ﬁrstwaveit
secondwaveit
thirdwaveit

dist to adborderit (km)
within admin boundaryit

radianceit (0–63)

观察结果

1992

1998

2007

2013

意思是

标清

意思是

标清

意思是

标清

意思是

标清

0.041
0.041
0.000
0.000

0.415
0.026
0.389
0.000

3.610
0.296

0.198
0.198
0.000
0.000

0.493
0.160
0.488
0.000

3.350
0.456

0.075
0.075
0.000
0.000

0.623
0.027
0.410
0.347

3.540
0.285

0.263
0.263
0.000
0.000

0.485
0.161
0.492
0.476

3.290
0.451

0.842
0.842
0.724
0.698

0.625
0.027
0.410
0.349

3.500
0.288

0.364
0.364
0.447
0.459

0.484
0.161
0.492
0.477

3.230
0.453

0.928
0.850
0.773
0.742

0.610
0.027
0.395
0.349

3.520
0.298

0.258
0.357
0.419
0.437

0.488
0.161
0.489
0.477

3.220
0.457

19.410

15.370

27.580

17.180

41.680

15.190

53.880

8.720

19,667

km = kilometer, SD = standard deviation, SEZ = Special Economic Zone.
来源: 作者的计算.

considered city centroids are smaller in the average year than areas outside of the
considered administrative city centers. Places within and outside of natural cities do
not differ in terms of their average location in terms of longitude and latitude, 但
they differ in terms of altitude: places inside natural cities have an average altitude
1.2 times lower than places outside. Only about 30% of all places in the data lie
within the administrative boundaries of one of the 300 major city centroids in our
sample. 通过对比, 62% of all places are located inside natural cities in the
average year. 最后, places inside and outside natural cities do not signiﬁcantly
differ in terms of average precipitation and temperature.

桌子 2 further suggests that places inside natural cities are more densely
populated and more luminous in the beginning of our study period (1.5 times and
2.3 次, 分别). Over the entire study period, both places inside and outside
of natural cities have a higher radiance level than they did in 1992. Places inside of
a natural city appear to experience a relatively stronger increase in radiance during
the study period. These places are also an average of 2.5 times more luminous than
places outside of a natural city over the entire study period.

桌子 3 summarizes descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation)
for all time-variant variables by year (1992, 1998, 2007, 和 2013). 桌子 3
suggests that the latest wave of hukou reforms (1996–2007) started impacting small
cities—only 7.5% of all places in the sample were treated in 1998—before reaching
medium-sized and large cities after 1998. Given that the hukou data are coded at
the provincial level and that we consider the 300 biggest administrative cities in the
PRC, it is not surprising that by 2013 almost 93% of all places in the sample had
experienced some degree of hukou reform. Concerning the SEZ indicators, 第一个
wave of reforms (1979–1985) included a relatively small number of places, 和

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

e
d
你
A
d
e
v
/
A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

我

F
/

3
4
2
5
1
1
6
4
4
3
4
5
A
d
e
v
_
A
_
0
0
0
9
5
p
d

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

哦
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

Natural City Growth in the PRC 63

仅有的 2.6% of all places treated during this wave, whereas the second (1986–1990)
第三个 (1991–1995) waves applied to more than one-third of all places in the
sample. 最后, 关于 62.3% of all places were assigned to an SEZ in 1995.
最后, 桌子 3 indicates that the average night-light radiance (radianceit) 增加
从 19.4 在 1992 到 53.9 在 2013.

Econometric Approach

In this subsection, we outline the econometric model used to estimate
coefﬁcients on the suspected determinants of the (night-light) luminosity of place i
in year t, radianceit. Two features of the dependent variable are worth mentioning:
(我) it is censored from below at 0 and from above at 63, 和 (二) it appears to be
serially correlated.10

To respect both the double censoring and autocorrelation through
equicorrelation (accruing to the repeated observation of places over time and the
presence of place-speciﬁc effects) and through inertia, we postulate a dynamic
Tobit model with double censoring and random effects. We account for dynamic
adjustment by letting radianceit be a function of its ﬁrst-, second-, and third-lagged
values Rit = (radianceit-1, radianceit-2, radianceit-3), 分别, and estimate it
along the lines of Wooldridge (2005). 因此, the endogeneity of the lagged
dependent variables on the right-hand side of the model—through the presence of
time-invariant random shocks, µi, in the models—can be acknowledged by properly
specifying the initial conditions of the process (Hsiao 2015).

Subsume all exogenous drivers of radianceit in the common vector Xit and
let α = (α1, α2, α3) be the unknown parameters on Rit and β be the unknown
parameters on Xit. 此外, let ϵit be the (normalized) remainder disturbances
in the processes. 然后, we may introduce a latent, uncensored, normal counterpart
to radianceit, radiance∗
它, and relate the two of them as follows:
if radiance∗
≤ 0
它
如果 0 < radiance∗ it if radiance∗ > 63
它
而且, we may specify the latent variable radiance∗

0
radiance∗
它
63

radianceit =

it in a linear fashion as

≤ 63

⎧
⎪⎨

(1)

⎪⎩

a function of the parameters of interest through

radiance∗
它

= Ritα + Xitβ + μi + εit

(2)

For the estimation of equation (2), we employ two alternative sets of initial
conditions for Rit. One involves the observed radiance in the initial year of the
数据, radiancei1992, and the other one additionally involves the time averages of all

10Even though the original night-light radiance data take on integer values only, the dependent variable used
here is continuous over the entire range of the data as we take the average of the night-light radiance across the pixels
在一个 3 km × 3 km place.

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

e
d
你
A
d
e
v
/
A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

我

F
/

3
4
2
5
1
1
6
4
4
3
4
5
A
d
e
v
_
A
_
0
0
0
9
5
p
d

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

哦
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

64 Asian Development Review

time-variant variables in Xit. Since the functional form of the dynamic Tobit model
with double censoring is nonlinear and Xit includes squared values of some of the
determinants, we will report marginal effects only as is customary with nonlinear
型号.

结果

桌子 4 summarizes the estimated effects of the lagged dependent variables
associated with ˆα, but only a subset of the effect estimates associated with ˆβ.11
例如, we do not report the effects pertaining to variables used for the
modeling of the initial condition with averages of the time-variant variables. 自从
the models are dynamic, the reported estimates should be interpreted as short-run
effects materializing within a 3-year time window. 而且, for the binary
variables in Xit (例如, the four variables each relating to either hukou or SEZ), 我们
compare the average of the conditional mean when the variable takes on a value of
unity for all places with the one when the variable takes on a value of zero for all
地方 (Greene 2012). In Column (1) of Table 4, we model the initial condition as a
function of the radiance in the initial year, radiancei1992. In Column (2), the initial
condition additionally includes the time averages of all time-variant variables. 在
a ﬁnal note, the magnitudes of the total short-run effects of continuous variables in
桌子 4 should only be compared across such variables after normalization (例如, 经过
scaling them with the standard deviation of the respective variables in Table 3).

As the signs of signiﬁcant effects do not differ qualitatively between Columns
(1) 和 (2), and since the estimation of Column (2) is less efﬁcient than for Column
(1), we focus on the effects in Column (1). While we observe that the hukou and
SEZ variables induce signiﬁcant effects on radianceit, we skip discussion of those
effects here for the sake of brevity. 相似地, we forego discussion of the effects of
geography and climate that are also reported in Table 4. 下文中, we focus
on the effects of infrastructure, particularly roads and railways, near a place.

Two things stand out regarding these effects: (我) greater distance to
transport infrastructure—such as roads, railway lines, and waterways—reduces the
night-light radiance of a place; 和 (二) the magnitude of the marginal effect of
ln(dist to roadi) is around ﬁve times larger than that of ln(dist to raili). 清楚地, 这些
effects on radianceit reﬂect the importance of transport infrastructure, 特别
roads, for local economic growth across all places in the sample.

11Table A.3 provides effects estimates akin to the dynamic Tobit model in Table 4 based on three alternative
speciﬁcations that ignore censoring. These alternative models are linear models and always include satellite ﬁxed
effects. Apart from the infrastructure variables of interest, they are speciﬁed as follows: (我) the model in Column (1)
does not include any other variables besides place ﬁxed effects; (二) the model in Column (2) is the same as in Column
(1), but includes control variables; 和 (三、) the model in Column (3) is the same as in Column (2), but includes lags
of the dependent variable and is an immediate linear counterpart to the dynamic Tobit model in Table 4. The results
across these models and the dynamic Tobit model in Table 4 are very robust. As with the dynamic Tobit model, 这
ﬁxed effects are parameterized in terms of averages of the time-variant explanatory variables.

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

e
d
你
A
d
e
v
/
A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

我

F
/

3
4
2
5
1
1
6
4
4
3
4
5
A
d
e
v
_
A
_
0
0
0
9
5
p
d

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

哦
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

Natural City Growth in the PRC 65

桌子 4. Estimation Results for Dynamic Tobit

radianceit
radianceit
radianceit
Full Sample Full Sample Nat = 1
(2)

(3)

(1)

radianceit
radianceit
radianceit
Nat = 0 Admin = 1 Admin = 0
(5)

(6)

(4)

radianceit-1

radianceit-2

radianceit-3

radiancei1992

ln(popdensi1990)

ln(dist to roadi)

ln(dist to raili)

ln(dist to oceani)

ln(dist to wateri)

ln(dist to centeri)

0.603***
(0.002)
0.194***
(0.002)
0.100***
(0.002)
0.039***
(0.001)
0.149***
(0.011)
−0.219***
(0.007)
−0.041***
(0.008)
−0.116***
(0.010)
−0.079***
(0.008)
−0.199***
(0.016)

ln(dist to adborderi) −0.025***

within admin
boundaryit

ln(altitudei)

longitudei

latitudei

ln(raini)

temperaturei

sd temperaturei

hukouit

smallit

mediumit

largeit

(0.009)
−0.047*
(0.024)
−0.010***
(0.016)
0.006*
(0.003)
0.054***
(0.011)
−0.288***
(0.055)
0.076***
(0.012)
−0.003
(0.018)
−0.750***
(0.069)
1.128***
(0.066)
0.497***
(0.054)
−0.696***
(0.053)

(0.014)

(0.010)

(0.021)

(0.018)

(0.013)

(0.011)

(0.009)
−0.056***
(0.009)

0.598***
(0.002)
0.189***
(0.002)
0.106***
(0.002)
0.044***
(0.001)
0.166***
(0.013)

0.607***
(0.003)
0.206***
(0.004)
0.088***
(0.003)
0.035***
(0.002)
0.110***
(0.024)

0.237***
(0.002)
0.0950***
(0.002)
0.114***
(0.002)
0.088***
(0.002)
0.098***
(0.019)

0.602***
0.524***
(0.002)
(0.002)
0.194***
0.149***
(0.002)
(0.002)
0.100***
0.028***
(0.002)
(0.002)
0.039***
0.190***
(0.001)
(0.003)
0.158***
0.115***
(0.011)
(0.023)
−0.217*** −0.360*** −0.317*** −0.219*** −0.221***
(0.013)
(0.014)
(0.007)
−0.038*** −0.066*** −0.091*** −0.003
(0.008)
(0.015)
(0.015)
−0.108*** −0.272*** −0.276*** −0.165*** −0.092***
(0.018)
(0.010)
−0.077*** −0.085*** −0.140*** −0.089*** −0.080***
(0.015)
(0.008)
(0.015)
(0.015)
−0.095*** −0.105*** −0.260***
−0.236*** −0.055*
(0.031)
(0.028)
(0.016)
(0.027)
0.056*** −0.022
−0.015
−0.059
(0.017)
(0.044)
(0.017)
(0.017)
−0.065
−0.704*** −0.027
(0.045)
(0.118)
(0.043)
0.072** −0.051*
−0.085*** −0.306***
(0.032)
(0.028)
(0.029)
(0.016)
−0.018***
−0.001
−0.001
0.014**
(0.006)
(0.006)
(0.006)
(0.003)
0.087***
0.119***
0.078***
0.093***
(0.02)
(0.022)
(0.012)
(0.020)
−1.134*** −0.719***
−0.103*
0.089
(0.099)
(0.107)
(0.102)
(0.057)
0.077***
0.197***
0.079***
0.035
(0.020)
(0.012)
(0.021)
(0.023)
−0.082**
−0.081*** −0.089*** −0.016
(0.035)
(0.032)
(0.019)
(0.033)
0.596*** −0.963***
−2.627***
−1.316*** −0.036
(0.137)
(0.070)
(0.081)
(0.207)
2.746*** −0.408**
0.592***
1.506***
(0.190)
(0.132)
(0.067)
(0.078)
1.226*** −0.441***
0.405***
1.093***
(0.074)
(0.095)
(0.062)
−0.927*** −0.809*** −0.809***
(0.063)
(0.065)

−0.133***
(0.020)
0.022***
(0.004)
0.026**
(0.013)
−0.494***
(0.067)
0.052***
(0.016)
−0.033
(0.022)

(0.082)
1.556***
(0.080)
0.550***
(0.064)
−0.785***
(0.064)

(0.021)
−0.035***
(0.012)

(0.165)
0.018
(0.153)

(0.088)

Continued.

我

D
哦
w
n
哦
A
d
e
d

F
r
哦
米
H

t
t

:
/
/

d
我
r
e
C
t
.

米

我
t
.

e
d
你
A
d
e
v
/
A
r
t
我
C
e
–
p
d

我

F
/

3
4
2
5
1
1
6
4
4
3
4
5
A
d
e
v
_
A
_
0
0
0
9
5
p
d

乙
y
G
你
e
s
t

哦
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
米
乙
e
r
2
0
2
3

66 Asian Development Review

桌子 4. Continued.

radianceit
radianceit
Full Sample Full Sample

(1)

(2)

radianceit
Nat = 1
(3)

radianceit
Nat = 0
(4)

radianceit
radianceit
Admin = 1 Admin = 0

(5)

(6)

SEZit

ﬁrstwaveit

secondwaveit

thirdwaveit

Time averages
Satellite effects

观察结果
Places

0.167***
(0.040)
−0.258***
(0.071)
−0.237***
(0.035)
0.319***
(0.031)

是的

373,673
19,667

0.977***
(0.185)
−0.315***
(0.075)
−0.306***
(0.041)
−1.649***
(0.277)

是的
是的

0.658***
(0.103)

0.561***
0.159**
(0.074)
(0.074)
−0.475*** −1.761***
0.011
(0.125)
(0.142)
−0.536*** −0.421*** −0.630***
(0.064)
(0.064)
0.467***
0.069
(0.056)
(0.057)

(0.101)
0.175**
(0.074)

(0.179)

0.048
(0.047)
0.079
(0.081)
−0.167***
(0.039)
0.421***
(0.036)

是的

373,673
19,667

158,116
19,656

215,557
16,756

是的

107,780
6,144

是的

265,893
14,187

Admin = within administrative boundary, Nat = natural city, SEZ = Special Economic Zone.
Notes: Reported coefﬁcients are marginal effects. Standard errors are reported in parentheses. *** = p < 0.01, ** = p < 0.05, * = p < 0.1. All columns include squared terms for the following geography and climate variables: ln(dist to roadi), ln(dist to raili), ln(dist to oceani), ln(dist to wateri), ln(dist to adborderit), ln(dist to centeri), ln(altitudei), ln(raini), temperaturei, sd temperaturei. Column (2) includes time averages for all time-variant variables. All columns include satellite effects. All distance measures in the empirical estimation are in meters. Source: Authors’ calculations. In Columns (3)–(6), we estimate the same model as in Column (1) for various subsamples of the data. Columns (3) and (4) divide the sample between places inside and outside of natural cities, while Columns (5) and (6) separate places inside and outside of the administrative borders of the major cities in our sample. Interestingly, the effect of ln(dist to roadi) in Column (3) is larger than in Column (4), while the opposite is observed for ln(dist to raili). Similarly, Column (6) shows a signiﬁcant negative impact of ln(dist to raili), while the corresponding estimate in Column (5) is much smaller and not signiﬁcant. The differences in the effects between Columns (3) and (4) on one hand and Columns (5) and (6) on the other—both in absolute terms and compared with Column (1)—reﬂect differences in the opportunity costs of certain types of transport infrastructure depending on the relative centrality or peripherality of places relative to the natural city or the administrative city center. In general, these results indicate that a marginal decline in distance to the road network leads places inside the natural city to grow relatively faster than places outside of it. However, a marginal decline in the distance to railway lines beneﬁts peripheral areas more than central ones.12 Using the estimated effects from Column (1) in Table 4, we can predict the radiance level of all places from period to period and the change associated with an infrastructure improvement to the road or railway networks. We do so by reducing 12Table A.4 presents the results of the estimation of the baseline model (Column [1] in Table 4) on further subsamples, namely places in all four domains of the binary classiﬁcation divided into administrative and natural city boundaries. l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u a d e v / a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / / 3 4 2 5 1 1 6 4 4 3 4 5 a d e v _ a _ 0 0 0 9 5 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Figure 6. Kernel Density Estimates—Observed versus Predicted Radiance Levels, 2007 Natural City Growth in the PRC 67 Source: Authors’ calculations. Figure 7. Kernel Density Estimates—Observed versus Predicted Radiance Levels, All Years l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u a d e v / a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / / 3 4 2 5 1 1 6 4 4 3 4 5 a d e v _ a _ 0 0 0 9 5 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Source: Authors’ calculations. the distance to roads and railway lines by one standard deviation. We use 2007 as the benchmark year for this thought experiment since it is the year in which there are almost as many places outside (49%) as inside natural cities (51%). We predict the radiance level of all places in 2007 given the estimated coefﬁcients associated with Column (1) of Table 4 and the variables in Rit and Xit as observed. We plot the kernel density estimates of observed and predicted radiance levels in 2007 in Figure 6.13 Then, we shock ln(dist to roadi) and ln(dist to raili) alternatively by one standard deviation in 2007 and let the process run to see how such shocks impact radiance levels in the short and long term. Following the deﬁnition of a natural city used in this paper, we assume that any place will be part of a natural city in the counterfactual scenario if (i) its predicted radiance level amounts to at least 40, and 13The kernel density estimates of observed and predicted radiance levels for all years are plotted in Figure 7 and reﬂect a similar ﬁt as the benchmark year (2007). 68 Asian Development Review Table 5. Transition Matrix of Counterfactual ln(dist to roadi) Deﬁnition: Nat = 1 if radiance > 40, Nat = 0 if radiance < 40 Counterfactual: ln(dist to roadi) Baseline Nat = 1 Nat = 0 Total Nat = 1 99.95(2007) 99.72(2012) 99.80(2017) 99.95(2022) 99.99(2027) 0.66(2007) 6.18(2012) 30.15(2017) 51.85(2022) 83.39(2027) 43.50(2007) 61.43(2012) 85.57(2017) 96.91(2022) 99.73(2027) Nat = 0 0.05(2007) 0.28(2012) 0.20(2017) 0.05(2022) 0.01(2027) 99.34(2007) 93.82(2012) 69.85(2017) 48.15(2022) 16.61(2027) 56.50(2007) 38.57(2012) 14.43(2017) 3.09(2022) 0.27(2027) Total 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 Nat = natural city. Note: In addition to the radiance threshold, the City Clustering Algorithm condition is a necessary condition for a place to be assigned as a natural city (Nat = 1). The City Clustering Algorithm condition implies that a place is near a cluster of places with average radiance greater or equal to the threshold. Source: Authors’ calculations. (ii) it is connected to other places in the natural city with a radiance level of at least 40. In Tables 5 and 6, we report effects of these shocks on radiance levels in 2007—as well as after 5, 10, 15, and 20 years—compared with the baseline predictions. Table 5 shows the effect of a shock on road infrastructure. Most places predicted to lie inside a natural city in the baseline case remain inside it in the counterfactual scenario after 5 years (99.7% in 2012) and after 20 years (100% in 2027). However, the share of places in the sample that are predicted to lie outside of the natural city in the baseline but inside of it in the counterfactual scenario steadily increases over time in response to the shock from 0.7% in 2007 to 30.2% in 2017 and to 83.4% in 2027. The magnitude of the effect is relatively high because the actual number of places not in a natural city after 2017 is relatively small by construction of the data set.14 Figures 8 and 9 illustrate the examples of Beijing and Shanghai, respectively.15 14The data set includes only those places that were in a natural city at some point between 1992 and 2013. This implies that all places that are not yet in a natural city in 2007 have a high probability of becoming part of a natural city within a few years. 15The sample includes only those places that are part of a natural city in any of the years covered. l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u a d e v / a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / / 3 4 2 5 1 1 6 4 4 3 4 5 a d e v _ a _ 0 0 0 9 5 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Natural City Growth in the PRC 69 Table 6. Transition Matrix of Counterfactual ln(dist to raili) Deﬁnition: Nat = 1 if radiance > 40, Nat = 0 if radiance < 40 Baseline Nat = 1 Nat = 0 Total Counterfactual: ln(dist to raili) Nat = 1 100.00(2007) 99.92(2012) 99.91(2017) 99.96(2022) 99.98(2027) 0.13(2007) 1.02(2012) 4.18(2017) 10.47(2022) 15.34(2027) 43.22(2007) 59.43(2012) 80.36(2017) 94.31(2022) 98.64(2027) Nat = 0 0.00(2007) 0.08(2012) 0.09(2017) 0.04(2022) 0.02(2027) 99.87(2007) 98.98(2012) 95.82(2017) 89.53(2022) 84.66(2027) 56.78(2007) 40.57(2012) 19.94(2017) 5.69(2022) 1.36(2027) Total 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 Nat = natural city. Note: In addition to the radiance threshold, the City Clustering Algorithm condition is a necessary condition for a place to be assigned as a natural city (Nat = 1). The City Clustering Algorithm condition implies that a place is near a cluster of places with average radiance greater or equal to the threshold. Source: Authors’ calculations. The picture is similar, albeit of a smaller magnitude, when looking at the effect of a shock on rail infrastructure as shown in Table 6. The extreme majority of places predicted inside a natural city in the baseline are also predicted to lie inside in the counterfactual analysis after 5 years (99.9% in 2012) and (100% in 2027). The share of places predicted to lie outside in the baseline but inside in the counterfactual (Nat = 0 in baseline, Nat = 1 in counterfactual) is also increasing over time from 0.1% in 2007 to 4.2% in 2017 to 15.2% in 2027. The smaller magnitude of the effect reﬂects the smaller magnitude of the coefﬁcient of ln(dist to raili) compared to the coefﬁcient of ln(dist to roadi) estimated in Column (1) of Table 4.16 Our ﬁnding that transport infrastructure has a positive effect on local economic activity is well aligned with the ﬁndings in Banerjee, Duﬂo, and Qian transport networks lead to higher levels of GDP (2012). They indicate that per capita, even though the effect reported is small in magnitude. In line with 16In Tables A.5 and A.6, we report the dynamic responses to an infrastructure shock when ﬁxing the night- light-radiance threshold for a place to be inside a natural city to 50 instead of 40. As expected, the main message of the results holds, even though the share of places predicted to lie outside the natural city in the baseline and inside in both counterfactuals is lower than in Tables 5 and 6. This simply reﬂects the distribution of night-light radiance across places as shown in Figure 7. l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u a d e v / a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / / 3 4 2 5 1 1 6 4 4 3 4 5 a d e v _ a _ 0 0 0 9 5 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 70 Asian Development Review Figure 8. Counterfactual Road and Rail—Beijing over Time l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u a d e v / a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / / 3 4 2 5 1 1 6 4 4 3 4 5 a d e v _ a _ 0 0 0 9 5 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Source: Authors’ illustration. Natural City Growth in the PRC 71 Figure 9. Counterfactual Road and Rail—Shanghai over Time l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u a d e v / a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / / 3 4 2 5 1 1 6 4 4 3 4 5 a d e v _ a _ 0 0 0 9 5 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Source: Authors’ illustration. 72 Asian Development Review Baum-Snow (2007) and Baum-Snow et al. (2016), the results in our paper also suggest that better transport connectivity increases local economic activity in suburban areas. Considering the population density in city centers versus suburban areas, Baum-Snow et al. (2016, 2) suggest that “each additional radial highway displaced about 4% of [the] central city population to suburban regions and that the existence of some ring road capacity in a city reduced city population by about 20%.” Contrary to these ﬁndings, we observe a positive effect of transport infrastructure on natural city growth, with a positive effect on both central and more peripheral areas of an average natural city. These results contrast with Faber (2014), who, looking at peripheral counties outside the commuting zones of metropolitan areas, ﬁnds that highway network connections have led to lower GDP growth among peripheral counties. This difference in ﬁndings suggests that transport networks have different effects on economic activity in remote areas than in metropolitan areas. IV. Conclusions This paper documents patterns in the size and growth of natural cities in the PRC for the 300 largest urban entities between 1992 and 2013. Rather than using administrative data on economic outcomes and their determinants, the paper identiﬁes the boundaries of a natural city, which is related more closely to the notion of MSAs or Functional Urban Zones, in terms of the night-light radiance of connected places that measure 3 km × 3 km. Ultimately, the boundaries of natural cities are determined by applying the CCA to remote-sensing data for those places during the review period. The key results of our analysis include the following. First, the number of distinct natural city centers decreased during the review period due to the absorption of some natural cities by others. This was particularly the case for larger cities, such as Shanghai, that formed natural supercities during the review period. Second, we detected rapid growth for the average natural city, which is in accordance with population census data that are only available at less frequent time intervals than night-light data, and adheres to the PRC’s goal of fostering the rate of urbanization. The results suggest that natural cities grew considerably beyond the administrative boundaries of cities, which calls into question policies that target urbanization rates and other related development objectives based on administrative city boundaries. Third, the global ﬁnancial crisis at the end of the last decade left its marks on natural city growth as some Chinese natural cities in our sample shrank between 2010 and 2013. Fourth, infrastructure improvements to the road and railway networks beneﬁt agglomerations, although railway network improvements are expected to mainly beneﬁt peripheral areas of cities more so than road improvements. In future work, we plan to focus more explicitly on the difference between time-variant administrative versus natural city boundaries, and shed further light l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u a d e v / a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / / 3 4 2 5 1 1 6 4 4 3 4 5 a d e v _ a _ 0 0 0 9 5 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Natural City Growth in the PRC 73 on the dynamic process of responses to the two exogenous shocks. While we mainly used institutional variables related to the hukou system and SEZs as control variables, we will scrutinize their effects more closely after having coded them at a greater level of detail in order to understand these effects with greater precision and a broader scope than was possible in the current paper. Finally, we will investigate the effects of changes in the PRC’s infrastructure networks, which was not possible with the data at hand, to better identify the associated effects on economic and other outcomes. References Au, Chun–Chung, and J. Vernon Henderson. 2006a. “Are Chinese Cities Too Small?” Review of Economic Studies 73 (3): 549–76. _____. 2006b. “How Migration Restrictions Limit Agglomeration and Productivity in China.” Journal of Development Economics 80 (2): 350–88. Banerjee, Abhijit, Esther Duﬂo, and Nancy Qian. 2012. “On the Road: Access to Transportation Infrastructure and Economic Growth in China.” NBER Working Paper No. 17897. Baum-Snow, Nathaniel. 2007. “Did Highways Cause Suburbanization?” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 122 (2): 775–805. Baum-Snow, Nathaniel, Loren Brandt, J. Vernon Henderson, Matthew A. Turner, and Qinghua Zhang. 2016. “Highways, Market Access, and Urban Growth in China.” SERC Discussion Papers 0200. _____. 2017. “Roads, Railroads, and Decentralization of Chinese Cities.” Review of Economics and Statistics. http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/REST_a_00660#.WMK1 -7YrJE4 Burchﬁeld, Marcy, Henry G. Overman, Diego Puga, and Matthew A. Turner. 2006. “Causes of Sprawl: A Portrait from Space.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 121 (2): 587–633. Croft, Thomas A. 1978. “Nighttime Images of the Earth from Space.” Scientiﬁc American 239 (1): 86–98. Desmet, Klaus, and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg. 2013. “Urban Accounting and Welfare.” American Economic Review 103 (6): 2296–327. Eaton, Jonathan, and Zvi Eckstein. 1997. “Cities and Growth: Theory and Evidence from France and Japan.” Regional Science and Urban Economics 27 (4–5): 443–74. Eeckhout, Jan. 2004. “Gibrat’s Law for (All) Cities.” American Economic Review 94 (5): 1429– 51. Faber, Benjamin. 2014. “Trade Integration, Market Size, and Industrialization: Evidence from China’s National Trunk Highway System.” Review of Economic Studies 81 (3): 1046–70. Fujita, Masahisa, and Hideaki Ogawa. 1980. “Equilibrium Land Use Patterns in a Non- Monocentric City.” Journal of Regional Science 20 (4): 455–75. _____. 1982. “Multiple Equilibria and Structural Transition of Non-monocentric Urban Conﬁgurations.” Regional Science and Urban Economics 12 (2): 161–96. Garcia-López, Miquel-Àngel, Camille Hémet, and Elisabet Viladecans-Marsal. 2016. “Job Decentralization, Subcenter Formation and Public Transportation.” https://editorialexpress .com/cgi-bin/conference/download.cgi?db_name=SAEE40&paper_id=148 Glaeser, Edward L., and Matthew E. Kahn. 2001. “Decentralized Employment and the Transformation of the American City.” NBER Working Paper No. 8117. l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u a d e v / a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / / 3 4 2 5 1 1 6 4 4 3 4 5 a d e v _ a _ 0 0 0 9 5 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 74 Asian Development Review _____. 2004. “Sprawl and Urban Growth.” In Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edited by J. Vernon Henderson and Jacques-François Thisse, 2481–527. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Greene, William H. 2012. Econometric Analysis, Pearson International Edition. London: Pearson Education, Limited. Harris-Dobkins, Linda, and Yannis M. Ioannides. 2001. “Spatial Interactions among US Cities: 1900–1990.” Regional Science and Urban Economics 31 (6): 701–31. Henderson, J. Vernon, and Arindam Mitra. 1996. “The New Urban Landscape: Developers and Edge Cities.” Regional Science and Urban Economics 26 (6): 613–43. Henderson, J. Vernon, Adam Storeygard, and David N. Weil. 2012. “Measuring Economic Growth from Outer Space.” American Economic Review 102 (2): 994–1028. Hsiao, Cheng. 2015. Analysis of Panel Data. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ioannides, Yannis M., and Henry G. Overman. 2003. “Zipf ’s Law for Cities: An Empirical Examination.” Regional Science and Urban Economics 33 (2): 127–37. Krugman, Paul. 1996. “Confronting the Mystery of Urban Hierarchy.” Journal of the Japanese and International Economies 10 (4): 399–418. McMillen, Daniel P., and Stefani C. Smith. 2003. “The Number of Subcenters in Large Urban Areas.” Journal of Urban Economics 53 (3): 321–38. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Earth Observation Group. https://ngdc.noaa .gov/eog/dmsp/downloadV4composites.html (accessed August 11, 2016). OpenStreetMap. https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=5/51.500/-0.100 (accessed August 11, 2016). Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). 2013. OECD Economic Surveys: China 2013. Paris: OECD Publishing. Rozenfeld, Hernán D., Diego Rybski, José S. Andrade, Michael Batty, H. Eugene Stanley, and Hernán A. Makse. 2008. “Laws of Population Growth.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105 (48): 18702–7. Rozenfeld, Hernán D., Diego Rybski, Xavier Gabaix, and Hernán A. Makse. 2011. “The Area and Population of Cities: New Insights from a Different Perspective on Cities.” American Economic Review 101 (5): 2205–25. Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center. http://dx.doi.org/10.7927/H4XK8CG2 (accessed August 11, 2016). Wang, Jin. 2013. “The Economic Impact of Special Economic Zones: Evidence from Chinese Municipalities.” Journal of Development Economics 101: 133–47. Wooldridge, Jeffrey M. 2005. “Simple Solutions to the Initial Conditions Problem in Dynamic, Nonlinear Panel Data Models with Unobserved Heterogeneity.” Journal of Applied Econometrics 20 (1): 39–54. World Bank. 2015. World Development Indicators. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB .TOTL.IN.ZS?end=2015&locations=CN&start=1960&view=chart Zipf, George Kingsley. 1949. Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort: An Introduction to Human Ecology. Boston: Addison–Wesley. l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u a d e v / a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / / 3 4 2 5 1 1 6 4 4 3 4 5 a d e v _ a _ 0 0 0 9 5 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Natural City Growth in the PRC 75 0 0 5 6 9 1 , 0 0 3 3 9 1 , 0 0 9 2 9 1 , 0 0 7 1 9 1 , 0 0 3 1 9 1 , 0 0 0 0 9 1 , 0 0 3 9 8 1 , 0 0 2 8 8 1 , 0 0 9 7 8 1 , 0 0 2 6 8 1 , 0 0 6 4 8 1 , 0 0 0 4 8 1 , 0 0 8 3 8 1 , 0 0 5 3 8 1 , 0 0 1 3 8 1 , 0 0 2 1 8 1 , 0 0 7 6 7 1 , 0 0 3 6 7 1 , 0 0 6 5 7 1 , 0 0 9 4 7 1 , 0 0 7 4 7 1 , 0 0 9 3 7 1 , 0 0 9 0 7 1 , 0 0 8 0 7 1 , 0 0 2 0 7 1 , 0 0 6 9 6 1 , 0 0 4 9 6 1 , . d e u n i t n o C g n a i j o a d a B u o h z n e h C n a i x u o Z n a i x n a W u i q g n a h S n a w o b i a H u o h z E u o h z n a u Q g n a y o a Z n a u y i a K g n i l g n o D g n a u h z o a Z g n e h z i Y u o h z g n i J g n e h c n i Q g n i p n a N g n a y i a L u g n a H n a u L g n i n n a i X n e m g n i J n a n i e W u o h z o a i J n i y i a B i a t u i J i u h s n a p u i L n a i J 6 2 2 7 2 2 8 2 2 9 2 2 0 3 2 1 3 2 2 3 2 3 3 2 4 3 2 5 3 2 6 3 2 7 3 2 8 3 2 9 3 2 0 4 2 1 4 2 2 4 2 3 4 2 4 4 2 5 4 2 6 4 2 7 4 2 8 4 2 9 4 2 0 5 2 1 5 2 2 5 2 0 0 5 , 6 4 3 0 0 2 , 5 4 3 0 0 0 , 5 4 3 0 0 3 , 7 3 3 0 0 3 , 6 3 3 0 0 1 , 4 3 3 0 0 4 , 1 3 3 0 0 5 , 8 2 3 0 0 1 , 4 2 3 0 0 3 , 2 2 3 0 0 2 , 2 2 3 0 0 9 , 7 1 3 0 0 2 , 7 1 3 0 0 4 , 4 1 3 0 0 2 , 4 1 3 0 0 8 , 8 0 3 0 0 6 , 7 0 3 0 0 8 , 3 0 3 0 0 9 , 2 0 3 0 0 7 , 2 0 3 0 0 6 , 2 0 3 0 0 3 , 2 9 2 0 0 2 , 3 8 2 0 0 1 , 3 8 2 0 0 7 , 7 7 2 0 0 1 , 4 7 2 0 0 5 , 8 6 2 g n i m o a M u o k u o h Z i x n i J i x i J i u h s g n o i h S n a h s g n o h Z g n i q o a h Z g n a h c g n o D g n i l e i T o p i a D u p n i X u o h z e D u o h z u L n e h z e d g n i J g n e f i h C i h s i h S g n i y g n o D g n i l g n o T a u h n a u X g n e h c i a B u o h z i u S i j n a Y i g r e , n a l u H n a w n a u Q n u h s n A a i x n e m n a S i y n i L 1 5 1 2 5 1 3 5 1 4 5 1 5 5 1 6 5 1 7 5 1 8 5 1 9 5 1 0 6 1 1 6 1 2 6 1 3 6 1 4 6 1 5 6 1 6 6 1 7 6 1 8 6 1 9 6 1 0 7 1 1 7 1 2 7 1 3 7 1 4 7 1 5 7 1 6 7 1 7 7 1 0 0 4 , 8 4 6 0 0 7 , 6 4 6 0 0 0 , 3 4 6 0 0 8 , 8 3 6 0 0 7 , 6 3 6 0 0 8 , 0 3 6 0 0 4 , 2 2 6 0 0 9 , 8 1 6 0 0 6 , 4 0 6 0 0 5 , 8 9 5 0 0 2 , 2 8 5 0 0 2 , 0 8 5 0 0 4 , 7 7 5 0 0 8 , 3 7 5 0 0 4 , 1 7 5 0 0 9 , 8 6 5 0 0 0 , 8 6 5 0 0 4 , 4 6 5 0 0 7 , 2 6 5 0 0 3 , 1 6 5 0 0 2 , 1 6 5 0 0 4 , 3 5 5 0 0 6 , 8 4 5 0 0 4 , 8 4 5 0 0 8 , 2 4 5 0 0 7 , 6 3 5 0 0 6 , 5 3 5 g n a i j n a d u M n a i t a h S g n a i j n e h Z g n e h c n a Y g n a y o a h S u o h z n i J u o h z i a T n a i a T g n e h c n a u L g n o d n a D n i j n a P n i l i u G g n e f i a K u o k a i j g n a h Z u o k g n i Y u o k i a H g n a i j n a h Z n i y i a u H g n a i j i e N g n a y u P u b g n e B i z e h i h S u o h z g n a Y g n a y e u Y i s u m a i J n a h s n a a M n e m a i X 6 7 7 7 8 7 9 7 0 8 1 8 2 8 3 8 4 8 5 8 6 8 7 8 8 8 9 8 0 9 1 9 2 9 3 9 4 9 5 9 6 9 7 9 8 9 9 9 0 0 1 1 0 1 2 0 1 0 0 9 , 9 0 2 , 7 0 0 3 , 4 0 1 , 4 0 0 7 , 4 6 0 , 4 0 0 9 , 5 4 9 , 3 0 0 8 , 7 2 5 , 3 0 0 6 , 0 8 4 , 3 0 0 9 , 8 7 3 , 3 0 0 9 , 4 4 2 , 3 0 0 3 , 9 2 1 , 3 0 0 2 , 0 7 8 , 2 0 0 5 , 0 9 6 , 2 0 0 0 , 7 3 3 , 2 0 0 7 , 2 5 0 , 2 0 0 2 , 0 4 0 , 2 0 0 5 , 1 6 9 , 1 0 0 2 , 5 2 9 , 1 0 0 0 , 1 9 8 , 1 0 0 5 , 1 8 8 , 1 0 0 8 , 3 8 6 , 1 0 0 9 , 7 5 6 , 1 0 0 7 , 5 2 6 , 1 0 0 6 , 0 0 6 , 1 0 0 3 , 4 8 5 , 1 0 0 3 , 4 2 4 , 1 0 0 2 , 7 1 4 , 1 0 0 3 , 2 1 4 , 1 0 0 5 , 8 7 2 , 3 1 i a h g n a h S g n i j i e B n a h u W u d g n e h C n i j n a i T g n a y n e h S n a i X g n i q g n o h C u o h z g n a u G n u h c g n a h C u o h z g n e h Z g n i j n a N n a u y i a T n i b r a H g n o l u i J n a i l a D n a n i J g n a u h z a i j i h S g n a h c n a N a h s g n a h C u o h z g n a H n a h s g n a T o a d g n i Q i q m u r U g n a y o u L g n a y n i X n i l i J 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 1 1 2 1 3 1 4 1 5 1 6 1 7 1 8 1 9 1 0 2 1 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 2 6 2 7 2 0 0 0 2 , n o i t a l u p o P y b a n i h C f o c i l b u p e R s ’ e l p o e P e h t n i s e i t i C e v i t a r t s i n i m d A t s e g g i B 0 0 3 e h t f o t s i L . 1 . A e l b a T n o i t a l u p o P e m a N k n a R n o i t a l u p o P e m a N k n a R n o i t a l u p o P e m a N k n a R n o i t a l u p o P e m a N k n a R x i d n e p p A l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u a d e v / a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / / 3 4 2 5 1 1 6 4 4 3 4 5 a d e v _ a _ 0 0 0 9 5 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 76 Asian Development Review . d e u n i t n o C . 1 . A e l b a T n o i t a l u p o P e m a N k n a R n o i t a l u p o P e m a N k n a R n o i t a l u p o P e m a N k n a R n o i t a l u p o P e m a N k n a R 0 0 3 9 6 1 , 0 0 9 8 6 1 , 0 0 5 8 6 1 , 0 0 3 8 6 1 , 0 0 8 7 6 1 , 0 0 6 7 6 1 , 0 0 9 6 6 1 , 0 0 7 6 6 1 , 0 0 5 6 6 1 , 0 0 4 6 6 1 , 0 0 5 5 6 1 , 0 0 3 5 6 1 , 0 0 2 5 6 1 , 0 0 2 4 6 1 , 0 0 6 3 6 1 , 0 0 4 3 6 1 , 0 0 6 2 6 1 , 0 0 3 2 6 1 , 0 0 3 1 6 1 , 0 0 5 9 5 1 , 0 0 6 8 5 1 , 0 0 4 8 5 1 , 0 0 3 8 5 1 , 0 0 8 7 5 1 , 0 0 3 7 5 1 , , 0 0 7 6 5 1 0 0 6 6 5 1 , 0 0 6 6 5 1 , , 0 0 0 6 5 1 . d e u n i t n o C g n a g g n a u H g n o d o a h Z g n o h u Y o a i p i e B e t o a h n a l u W n a h s g n e H u o g u o t n e M g n e f g n o L u o h z u H g n a y u F e h n i L u o h z o B g n i l u F u h g n o H g n a y e D n a g o a i X n i l u Y g n e h c i h Z o a i p n a N n u t a i j u S i e w n a h S n u h c i Y g n e h c A g n a i l a D n a h s o B a u h n u D a l r o K n a i e B g n a i j n a i Q 3 5 2 4 5 2 5 5 2 6 5 2 7 5 2 8 5 2 9 5 2 0 6 2 1 6 2 2 6 2 3 6 2 4 6 2 5 6 2 6 6 2 7 6 2 8 6 2 9 6 2 0 7 2 1 7 2 2 7 2 3 7 2 4 7 2 5 7 2 6 7 2 7 7 2 8 7 2 9 7 2 0 8 2 1 8 2 0 0 2 , 8 6 2 0 0 7 , 5 6 2 0 0 5 , 5 6 2 0 0 2 , 4 6 2 0 0 6 , 3 6 2 0 0 5 , 3 6 2 0 0 8 , 1 6 2 0 0 6 , 9 5 2 0 0 4 , 8 5 2 0 0 3 , 8 5 2 0 0 5 , 7 5 2 0 0 7 , 6 5 2 0 0 6 , 6 5 2 0 0 2 , 4 5 2 0 0 4 , 8 4 2 0 0 3 , 8 4 2 0 0 8 , 6 4 2 0 0 4 , 6 4 2 0 0 4 , 0 4 2 0 0 0 , 0 4 2 0 0 3 , 9 3 2 0 0 9 , 8 3 2 0 0 2 , 8 3 2 0 0 5 , 6 3 2 0 0 8 , 4 3 2 0 0 9 , 1 3 2 0 0 8 , 9 2 2 0 0 5 , 8 2 2 0 0 0 , 6 2 2 u o h z i u H g n a y n a N u o h z u W g n a i j u i J g n e h c g n i Y u s k A n a i d g n a f a W g n a y n a i M g n e h c n i J o a r g n a h S o a i l g n o T a u h i u S e z e H g n e h c u S g n i n i J u o k e h o a L o a h z i R n i b i Y i h s a K g n i n i Y i b e H g n a h c n a i M u o h z n a G o a t n a i X u o h z n i J u l u h g n a R u o h z u h C n e f n i L i a h i e B 8 7 1 9 7 1 0 8 1 1 8 1 2 8 1 3 8 1 4 8 1 5 8 1 6 8 1 7 8 1 8 8 1 9 8 1 0 9 1 1 9 1 2 9 1 3 9 1 4 9 1 5 9 1 6 9 1 7 9 1 8 9 1 9 9 1 0 0 2 1 0 2 2 0 2 3 0 2 4 0 2 5 0 2 6 0 2 0 0 3 , 9 2 5 0 0 7 , 9 1 5 0 0 5 , 2 1 5 0 0 5 , 2 1 5 0 0 6 , 9 9 4 0 0 8 , 7 9 4 0 0 3 , 6 9 4 0 0 8 , 4 9 4 0 0 0 , 0 9 4 0 0 6 , 9 8 4 0 0 8 , 6 8 4 0 0 1 , 0 8 4 0 0 2 , 8 7 4 0 0 9 , 3 7 4 0 0 5 , 1 7 4 0 0 5 , 0 7 4 0 0 4 , 0 7 4 0 0 4 , 0 7 4 0 0 9 , 6 6 4 0 0 9 , 5 6 4 0 0 6 , 0 6 4 0 0 6 , 7 5 4 0 0 5 , 7 5 4 0 0 3 , 3 5 4 0 0 1 , 6 4 4 0 0 3 , 2 4 4 0 0 5 , 2 3 4 0 0 6 , 8 2 4 0 0 2 , 5 1 4 u o h z g n a h Z n a u g o a h S n e m n u h Z o u z o a i J n a h s o F g n o l n a u Y i a t g n i X u h u W e y g n a h Z u g g n a T g n i q i u K g n a h c i Y g n i p i S a u h i h z n a P n a f g n a i X g n a i j o a i J u o h z g n a C n a u y o a i L n a u h c n i Y g n i x a i J e d g n a h C n e m g n a i J i a h u h Z e d g n e h C i u h s g n e H n e m o A i h s a h S o a i q u L i j o a B 3 0 1 4 0 1 5 0 1 6 0 1 7 0 1 8 0 1 9 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 3 1 1 4 1 1 5 1 1 6 1 1 7 1 1 8 1 1 9 1 1 0 2 1 1 2 1 2 2 1 3 2 1 4 2 1 5 2 1 6 2 1 7 2 1 8 2 1 9 2 1 0 3 1 1 3 1 0 0 2 , 9 0 4 , 1 0 0 0 , 9 0 4 , 1 0 0 9 , 2 6 3 , 1 0 0 8 , 5 4 3 , 1 0 0 6 , 6 2 2 , 1 0 0 2 , 6 2 2 , 1 0 0 3 , 1 2 2 , 1 0 0 7 , 0 6 1 , 1 0 0 2 , 0 5 1 , 1 0 0 8 , 9 2 1 , 1 0 0 2 , 0 2 1 , 1 0 0 2 , 9 9 0 , 1 0 0 6 , 3 5 0 , 1 0 0 5 , 0 1 0 , 1 0 0 2 , 6 7 9 0 0 9 , 7 6 9 0 0 9 , 8 1 9 0 0 4 , 7 1 9 0 0 7 , 6 0 9 0 0 1 , 8 8 8 0 0 4 , 0 8 8 0 0 2 , 7 6 8 0 0 0 , 0 6 8 0 0 3 , 9 5 8 0 0 1 , 8 0 8 0 0 7 , 2 8 7 0 0 7 , 0 8 7 0 0 7 , 2 6 7 0 0 9 , 9 5 7 o a d g n a g g n a i X u o h z n a L n u h s u F i e f e H u o t o a B n a h s n A u o t n a h S g n a y i u G u o h z u S n a d n a H u o h z u F u o h z u X g n o t a D i x u W g n a y n a i X g n i m n u K i x n e B n a h s g n i d g n i P u o h z g n a h C g n i d o a B g n i n n a N u o h z n e W r a h i q i Q n a n i a u H i e b i a u H g n i n i X g n a y g n e H t o h h o H g n a y n A 8 2 9 2 0 3 1 3 2 3 3 3 4 3 5 3 6 3 7 3 8 3 9 3 0 4 1 4 2 4 3 4 4 4 5 4 6 4 7 4 8 4 9 4 0 5 1 5 2 5 3 5 4 5 5 5 6 5 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u a d e v / a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / / 3 4 2 5 1 1 6 4 4 3 4 5 a d e v _ a _ 0 0 0 9 5 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Natural City Growth in the PRC 77 . d e u n i t n o C . 1 . A e l b a T n o i t a l u p o P e m a N k n a R n o i t a l u p o P e m a N k n a R n o i t a l u p o P e m a N k n a R n o i t a l u p o P e m a N k n a R 0 0 8 5 5 1 , 0 0 5 5 5 1 , 0 0 6 4 5 1 , 0 0 3 4 5 1 , 0 0 2 3 5 1 , 0 0 9 2 5 1 , 0 0 7 2 5 1 , 0 0 0 2 5 1 , 0 0 2 0 5 1 , 0 0 4 9 4 1 , 0 0 9 7 4 1 , 0 0 0 7 4 1 , 0 0 9 5 4 1 , 0 0 8 5 4 1 , 0 0 7 5 4 1 , 0 0 7 5 4 1 , 0 0 5 5 4 1 , 0 0 3 5 4 1 , 0 0 3 4 4 1 , i u h s g n a u G u o h z n i X n u h c i Y u o h z g n i D y a m a r a K i j n i X i l i a K n a h s e L i m o a G i a h n i L g n i l u h z g n o G n a y g n a u H n a i d a u H a u h n i J g n o h z n a H g n e h c i u H u o h z i h C n a h s u Y u y u F 2 8 2 3 8 2 4 8 2 5 8 2 6 8 2 7 8 2 8 8 2 9 8 2 0 9 2 1 9 2 2 9 2 3 9 2 4 9 2 5 9 2 6 9 2 7 9 2 8 9 2 9 9 2 0 0 3 0 0 7 , 5 2 2 0 0 7 , 5 2 2 0 0 5 , 4 2 2 0 0 6 , 3 2 2 0 0 1 , 3 2 2 0 0 7 , 1 2 2 0 0 1 , 0 2 2 0 0 7 , 9 1 2 0 0 1 , 9 1 2 0 0 8 , 8 1 2 0 0 3 , 9 0 2 0 0 0 , 9 0 2 0 0 4 , 6 0 2 0 0 5 , 5 0 2 0 0 2 , 3 0 2 0 0 5 , 9 9 1 0 0 5 , 7 9 1 0 0 3 , 7 9 1 0 0 0 , 7 9 1 g n e h c o a i L u t r e a S n a u h c g n o T i a t n i X n a u y g n a u G g n o h c n a N n e m n a i T i c u Y e u x u W g n a y i Y n a h s a y g n a u h S n a i d a m u h Z g n e h c i a H g n i m n a S u o h z u S a i x n i L g n e h c n u Y r a l i a H a d n A 7 0 2 8 0 2 9 0 2 0 1 2 1 1 2 2 1 2 3 1 2 4 1 2 5 1 2 6 1 2 7 1 2 8 1 2 9 1 2 0 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 2 3 2 2 4 2 2 5 2 2 0 0 1 , 2 0 4 0 0 2 , 1 0 4 0 0 9 , 9 9 3 0 0 0 , 8 9 3 0 0 7 , 0 8 3 0 0 9 , 9 7 3 0 0 7 , 6 7 3 0 0 7 , 1 7 3 0 0 2 , 1 7 3 0 0 9 , 9 6 3 0 0 6 , 5 6 3 0 0 4 , 5 6 3 0 0 0 , 5 6 3 0 0 5 , 6 5 3 0 0 2 , 4 5 3 0 0 9 , 0 5 3 0 0 7 , 0 5 3 0 0 1 , 0 5 3 0 0 6 , 6 4 3 n a u q g n a Y i y n u Z g n i n i J n a y i h S n a u g g n o D g n a i x g n i P g n a f i e W n a i t u P g n a h c u X g n o g i a S g n o g i X i j g n a h C g n a i j g n a Y e h i a t i Q u o h z o a h C g n i x o a h S g n a y o a h C g n i q n A e h o u L 2 3 1 3 3 1 4 3 1 5 3 1 6 3 1 7 3 1 8 3 1 9 3 1 0 4 1 1 4 1 2 4 1 3 4 1 4 4 1 5 4 1 6 4 1 7 4 1 8 4 1 9 4 1 0 5 1 0 0 8 , 7 5 7 0 0 2 , 2 5 7 0 0 2 , 8 4 7 0 0 4 , 2 4 7 0 0 0 , 9 2 7 0 0 7 , 4 2 7 0 0 8 , 1 2 7 0 0 1 , 1 2 7 0 0 9 , 9 0 7 0 0 2 , 7 0 7 0 0 9 , 2 9 6 0 0 8 , 7 8 6 0 0 6 , 3 8 6 0 0 2 , 9 7 6 0 0 2 , 7 7 6 0 0 4 , 1 7 6 0 0 5 , 9 6 6 0 0 2 , 2 5 6 0 0 1 , 0 5 6 g n a i x n i X n e h z n e h S g n o t o a h Z u o h z u h Z u o h z u i L g n a f g n a L g n a g e H o b g n i N g n o g i Z o a d g n a u h n i Q n a i d g n a h Z i h z g n a h C g n o t n a N i h s g n a u H g n e h c g n o R g n a y o a i L i a t n a Y n a t g n a i X n i x u F 7 5 8 5 9 5 0 6 1 6 2 6 3 6 4 6 5 6 6 6 7 6 8 6 9 6 0 7 1 7 2 7 3 7 4 7 5 7 . ) 6 1 0 2 , 2 1 y l u J d e s s e c c a ( m t h . N C - s e i t i c - h c - e - x e d n i / m o c . o e g a t . w w w / / : p t t h . a n i h C f o c i l b u p e R s ’ e l p o e P . o e g a T : e c r u o S l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u a d e v / a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / / 3 4 2 5 1 1 6 4 4 3 4 5 a d e v _ a _ 0 0 0 9 5 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 78 Asian Development Review 0 0 0 2 , e z i S y b a n i h C f o c i l b u p e R s ’ e l p o e P e h t n i s e i t i C l a r u t a N f o t s i L . 2 . A e l b a T ) 2 m k ( a e r A d e g r e M e m a N k n a R ) 2 m k ( a e r A d e g r e M e m a N k n a R ) 2 m k ( a e r A d e g r e M e m a N k n a R 0 0 4 5 . 0 0 4 5 . 0 0 4 5 . 0 0 4 5 . 0 0 4 5 . 0 0 5 4 . 0 0 5 4 . 0 0 5 4 . 0 0 5 4 . 0 0 5 4 . 0 0 5 4 . 0 0 5 4 . 0 0 5 4 . 0 0 5 4 . 0 0 5 4 . 0 0 5 4 . 0 0 5 4 . 0 0 5 4 . 0 0 5 4 . 0 0 5 4 . 0 0 6 3 . 0 0 6 3 . 0 0 6 3 . 0 0 6 3 . 0 0 6 3 . 0 0 6 3 . 0 0 6 3 . 0 0 6 3 . . d e u n i t n o C g n a h c i Y g n e h z i Y g n i n i Y i c u Y g n a u h z o a Z g n e h c A g n i q n A g n a i j o a d a B n a w o b i a H n a n i a u H g n a y i a L e h i a t i Q n a u g o a h S n a t g n a i X g n a y n i X n a u q g n a Y g n a y e u Y n i l u Y g n e h c n u Y u o h z u h Z n i y i a B n a h s o B u s k A u o h z u h C g n a y u F i m o a G g n i l u h z g n o G n a i t u P 5 4 1 6 4 1 7 4 1 8 4 1 9 4 1 0 5 1 1 5 1 2 5 1 3 5 1 4 5 1 5 5 1 6 5 1 7 5 1 8 5 1 9 5 1 0 6 1 1 6 1 2 6 1 3 6 1 4 6 1 5 6 1 6 6 1 7 6 1 8 6 1 9 6 1 0 7 1 1 7 1 2 7 1 0 0 . 7 1 1 0 0 . 8 0 1 0 0 . 8 0 1 0 0 . 8 0 1 0 0 . 8 0 1 0 0 . 8 0 1 0 0 . 8 0 1 0 0 . 8 0 1 8 6 . 0 0 1 0 0 . 9 9 0 0 . 9 9 0 0 . 9 9 0 0 . 9 9 0 0 . 9 9 0 0 . 9 9 0 0 . 9 9 0 0 . 9 9 0 0 . 9 9 6 5 . 2 9 0 0 . 0 9 0 0 . 0 9 0 0 . 0 9 0 0 . 0 9 1 5 . 6 8 0 0 . 1 8 0 0 . 1 8 0 0 . 1 8 0 0 . 1 8 g n a y i u G i a t g n i X i x n i J g n a y n a i M g n i p i S n a f g n a i X g n a y n a i X g n a i x n i X u o k i a H u o h z g n a C n i y i a u H a l r o K n a h s g n i d g n i P g n a h c n a N g n i q o a h Z g n a i j n a h Z u o k g n i Y i x n e B g n e h c o a i L n a h s n a a M u o h z g n a h Z i z e h i h S u p n i X o a h z i R u b g n e B g n o d n a D n i x u F r a l i a H 3 7 4 7 5 7 6 7 7 7 8 7 9 7 0 8 1 8 2 8 3 8 4 8 5 8 6 8 7 8 8 8 9 8 0 9 1 9 2 9 3 9 4 9 5 9 6 9 7 9 8 9 9 9 0 0 1 2 0 . 3 7 4 , 8 0 0 . 2 4 0 , 3 2 4 . 7 2 0 , 3 0 0 . 5 2 1 , 1 0 0 . 4 4 0 , 1 0 0 . 0 9 9 0 0 . 6 5 7 0 0 . 8 3 7 0 0 . 1 1 7 0 0 . 4 8 6 1 4 . 0 4 6 9 5 . 8 3 6 2 4 . 1 2 6 0 0 . 4 9 5 0 0 . 8 5 5 0 0 . 7 7 4 0 0 . 9 5 4 0 0 . 0 5 4 0 0 . 3 2 4 1 3 . 4 0 4 0 0 . 6 9 3 0 0 . 7 8 3 0 0 . 9 6 3 0 0 . 0 6 3 0 0 . 1 5 3 3 8 . 6 4 3 0 0 . 2 4 3 1 0 . 7 3 3 8 1 2 3 1 1 1 u o h z g n a u G i a h g n a h S g n i j i e B n i j n a i T u l u h g n a R g n a y n e h S g n i j n a N n a h u W n i b r a H n u h c g n a h C o a d g n i Q n a i l a D u o h z g n a H i q m u r U u d g n e h C n a u y i a T n a i X n a n i J g n a u h z a i j i h S u o h z g n e h Z g n i m n u K ) S J ( u o h z u S g n i q g n o h C i h s i h S u o t o a B u o t n a h S i a h u h Z n i l i J 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 1 1 2 1 3 1 4 1 5 1 6 1 7 1 8 1 9 1 0 2 1 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 2 6 2 7 2 8 2 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u a d e v / a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / / 3 4 2 5 1 1 6 4 4 3 4 5 a d e v _ a _ 0 0 0 9 5 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Natural City Growth in the PRC 79 0 0 6 3 . 0 0 6 3 . 0 0 6 3 . 0 0 6 3 . 0 0 6 3 . 0 0 6 3 . 0 0 7 2 . 0 0 7 2 . 0 0 7 2 . 0 0 7 2 . 0 0 7 2 . 0 0 7 2 . 0 0 7 2 . 0 0 7 2 . 0 0 7 2 . 0 0 7 2 . 0 0 7 2 . 0 0 7 2 . 0 0 7 2 . 0 0 8 1 . 0 0 8 1 . 0 0 8 1 . 0 0 8 1 . 0 0 8 1 . 0 0 8 1 . 0 0 8 1 . 0 0 8 1 . 0 0 8 1 . . d e u n i t n o C u o h z n i X g n a h c u X a u h i u S g n o d o a h Z u o k u o h Z n a i d a m u h Z n a y g n a u H n e m g n i J a u h n u D a d n A ) M N ( g n i n i J ) H A ( i a h n i L u o h z u S n a u y i a K n a i d g n a f a W g n i l g n o T n a n i e W u o h z u W ) L H ( n u h c i Y u o h z o B g n a y e D g n i l u F u g n a H n a i d a u H g n a i j u i J g n a h c n a i M g n i m o a M g n e h c u S 3 7 1 4 7 1 5 7 1 6 7 1 7 7 1 8 7 1 9 7 1 0 8 1 1 8 1 2 8 1 3 8 1 4 8 1 5 8 1 6 8 1 7 8 1 8 8 1 9 8 1 0 9 1 1 9 1 2 9 1 3 9 1 4 9 1 5 9 1 6 9 1 7 9 1 8 9 1 9 9 1 0 0 2 0 0 . 1 8 0 0 . 1 8 0 0 . 1 8 0 0 . 1 8 0 0 . 1 8 0 0 . 1 8 0 0 . 1 8 0 0 . 2 7 0 0 . 2 7 0 0 . 2 7 0 0 . 2 7 0 0 . 2 7 0 0 . 2 7 0 0 . 2 7 0 0 . 2 7 0 0 . 2 7 0 0 . 2 7 0 0 . 2 7 0 0 . 2 7 0 0 . 3 6 0 0 . 3 6 0 0 . 3 6 0 0 . 3 6 0 0 . 3 6 0 0 . 3 6 0 0 . 3 6 0 0 . 3 6 0 0 . 3 6 ) D S ( g n i n i J u o h z u H o u z o a i J a u h i h z n a P g n e h c n a Y g n a i j n e h Z u o h z o a h C i j g n a h C n a h s u Y i e b i a u H n i l i u G i h s a K n e f n i L i x i J g n a y n a N u i q g n a h S g n i x o a h S u o h z i a T g n e h c i a B e d g n a h C g n e f i h C i j o a B i j n a Y g n a h c g n o D i u h s g n e H i h s g n a u H n a l u H a u h n i J 1 0 1 2 0 1 3 0 1 4 0 1 5 0 1 6 0 1 7 0 1 8 0 1 9 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 3 1 1 4 1 1 5 1 1 6 1 1 7 1 1 8 1 1 9 1 1 0 2 1 1 2 1 2 2 1 3 2 1 4 2 1 5 2 1 6 2 1 7 2 1 8 2 1 0 0 . 4 2 3 0 0 . 5 1 3 6 5 . 7 0 3 0 0 . 6 0 3 0 0 . 6 0 3 0 0 . 6 0 3 0 0 . 7 9 2 0 0 . 9 7 2 0 0 . 0 7 2 0 0 . 3 4 2 3 5 . 8 3 2 4 4 . 3 3 2 0 0 . 5 2 2 0 0 . 5 2 2 0 0 . 5 2 2 0 0 . 6 1 2 0 0 . 7 0 2 0 0 . 7 0 2 0 0 . 0 8 1 0 0 . 1 7 1 0 0 . 1 7 1 0 0 . 1 7 1 0 0 . 1 7 1 0 0 . 1 7 1 0 0 . 1 7 1 0 0 . 1 7 1 9 3 . 9 6 1 0 0 . 2 6 1 1 t o h h o H n a h s n A i a t n a Y g n i y g n o D u o h z u F i x u W i e f e H a h s g n a h C o b g n i N n u h s u F u o h z n e W u g g n a T u o h z g n a h C g n o t a D u o h z u X g n i d o a B n a d n a H g n i n n a N n a i d g n a h Z u o h z i u H g n a y o a i L g n a y o u L n i j n a P n a u h c n i Y g n a i j o a i J g n a f g n a L g n a f i e W i y n i L 9 2 0 3 1 3 2 3 3 3 4 3 5 3 6 3 7 3 8 3 9 3 0 4 1 4 2 4 3 4 4 4 5 4 6 4 7 4 8 4 9 4 0 5 1 5 2 5 3 5 4 5 5 5 6 5 . d e u n i t n o C . 2 . A e l b a T ) 2 m k ( a e r A d e g r e M e m a N k n a R ) 2 m k ( a e r A d e g r e M e m a N k n a R ) 2 m k ( a e r A d e g r e M e m a N k n a R l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u a d e v / a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / / 3 4 2 5 1 1 6 4 4 3 4 5 a d e v _ a _ 0 0 0 9 5 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 80 Asian Development Review . d e u n i t n o C . 2 . A e l b a T ) 2 m k ( a e r A d e g r e M e m a N k n a R ) 2 m k ( a e r A d e g r e M e m a N k n a R ) 2 m k ( a e r A d e g r e M e m a N k n a R 0 0 8 1 . 0 0 8 1 . 0 0 8 1 . 3 9 6 1 . 0 0 9 . 0 0 9 . 0 0 . 9 0 0 9 . 0 0 . 9 0 0 9 . 0 0 9 . 0 0 9 . 0 0 . 9 u o h z n e h C u o h z g n i D i e w n a h S g n a g g n a u H g n e h c n a u L i a t u i J n a g o a i X i j n i X i y n u Z u o h z i u S n a i x n a W e y g n a h Z i a t n i X 1 0 2 2 0 2 3 0 2 4 0 2 5 0 2 6 0 2 7 0 2 8 0 2 9 0 2 0 1 2 1 1 2 2 1 2 3 1 2 0 0 . 3 6 0 0 . 3 6 0 0 . 3 6 0 0 . 3 6 0 0 . 3 6 6 8 . 2 6 6 2 . 1 6 0 0 . 4 5 0 0 . 4 5 0 0 . 4 5 0 0 . 4 5 0 0 . 4 5 0 0 . 4 5 0 0 . 4 5 0 0 . 4 5 0 0 . 4 5 1 1 y a m a r a K e h o u L g n i l e i T o a i l g n o T n a i x u o Z i a h i e B g n a i j g n a Y e d g n e h C g n e h c i a H u o h z o a i J g n e h c n i J u o h z g n i J n a u y o a i L e z e H e t o a h n a l u W a u h n a u X 9 2 1 0 3 1 1 3 1 2 3 1 3 3 1 4 3 1 5 3 1 6 3 1 7 3 1 8 3 1 9 3 1 0 4 1 1 4 1 2 4 1 3 4 1 4 4 1 6 8 . 9 5 1 0 0 . 3 5 1 0 0 . 4 4 1 0 0 . 4 4 1 0 0 . 4 4 1 8 6 . 0 4 1 0 0 . 5 3 1 0 0 . 5 3 1 0 0 . 6 2 1 0 0 . 6 2 1 0 0 . 6 2 1 0 0 . 6 2 1 0 0 . 7 1 1 0 0 . 7 1 1 0 0 . 7 1 1 0 0 . 7 1 1 o a d g n a u h n i Q g n a y n A g n a y u P r a h i q i Q n e m a i X g n i n i X u y u F ) N L ( u o h z n i J g n a i j n a d u M g n e h c g n o R g n i x a i J u o h z g n a Y u o h z e D i s u m a i J n a i a T u h u W 7 5 8 5 9 5 0 6 1 6 2 6 3 6 4 6 5 6 6 6 7 6 8 6 9 6 0 7 1 7 2 7 , n o i g e R s u o m o n o t u A a i l o g n o M r e n n I = M N , e c n i v o r P g n i n o a i L = N L , r e t e m o l i k e r a u q s = 2 m k , e c n i v o r P u s g n a i J = S J , e c n i v o r P g n a i j g n o l i e H = L H , e c n i v o r P i u h n A = H A . e c n i v o r P g n o d n a h S = D S d n a : u o h z g n a u G . 1 : s w o l l o f s a e r a r e d r o k n a r n i s e i t i c d e g r e M ” . e m a N “ r e d n u d e t s i l y t i c e v i t c e p s e r e h t o t n i d e g r e m t a h t , y n a f i , s e i t i c f o r e b m u n l a t o t e h t s t r o p e r ” d e g r e M “ : s e t o N , g n i l g n o D : g n a y n e h S . 6 ; u t r e a S d n a g n e f g n o L : u l u h g n a R . 5 ; u o g u o t n e M : g n i j i e B . 2 ; n a h s g n o h Z d n a , i u h s g n o i h S , n e h z n e h S , n e m g n a i J , g n e h c i u H , n a h s o F , n a u g g n o D , g n a i l a D e h T . i h s a S : u o h z g n i J . 1 4 1 ; g n a y o a h C : e d g n e h C . 6 3 1 ; o a i q u L : g n a i j o a i J . 5 5 ; n e m o A : i a h u h Z . 8 2 ; u o h z n a u Q : i h s i h S . 0 2 ; ) n a i l a D ( u o h z n i J : n a i l a D . 2 1 ; g n o h u Y d n a , n u t a i j u S s i s e i t i c l a r u t a n e h t f o a e r a e h T . 0 0 0 2 n i ) 0 4 ( d l o h s e r h t e c n a i d a r e h t t e e m t o n d i d s e i t i c e m o s s a 0 0 3 n a h t s s e l e b y a m s e i t i c l a r u t a n d e g r e m d n a s e i t i c l a r u t a n f o r e b m u n l a t o t . ) r e d r o b s ’ y r t n u o c e h t t a d e t a c o l f i s s e l s i d n a ( s r e t e m o l i k 3 × s r e t e m o l i k 3 f o e z i s m u m i x a m a s a h d i r g e n o e r e h w , y t i c r e p s e c a l p f o r e b m u n e h t g n i s u d e t a l u c l a c . s n o i t a l u c l a c ’ s r o h t u A : e c r u o S l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u a d e v / a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / / 3 4 2 5 1 1 6 4 4 3 4 5 a d e v _ a _ 0 0 0 9 5 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Natural City Growth in the PRC 81 Table A.3. Estimation Results for Alternative Non-Tobit Models radianceit-1 radianceit-2 radianceit-3 radiancei1992 ln(popdensi1990) ln(dist to roadi) ln(dist to raili) ln(dist to oceani) ln(dist to wateri) ln(dist to centeri) ln(dist to adborderi) ln(altitudei) longitudei latitudei ln(raini) temperaturei sd temperaturei hukouit smallit mediumit largeit SEZit ﬁrstwaveit OLS radianceit (1) OLS radianceit (2) −2.851*** (0.066) −2.915*** (0.068) −2.195*** (0.063) −2.405 (0.067) −1.434*** (0.092) −1.417*** (0.072) −7.130*** (0.143) −0.404*** (0.138) −0.261* (0.145) −0.026 (0.034) 1.183*** (0.131) −2.387*** (0.561) 1.183*** (0.120) −1.633*** (0.186) −1.966*** (0.253) 3.059*** (0.257) 2.094*** (0.231) −0.480** 0.520*** (0.179) −2.192*** (0.311) OLS radianceit (3) 0.609*** (0.002) 0.194*** (0.002) 0.100*** (0.002) 0.019*** (0.001) 0.098*** (0.008) −0.185*** (0.006) −0.044*** (0.007) −0.090*** (0.008) −0.080*** (0.007) −0.159*** (0.013) −0.094** (0.046) −0.066*** (0.013) −0.004 (0.003) 0.044*** (0.011) −0.160*** (0.047) 0.060*** (0.011) −0.066 (0.013) −1.502*** (0.079) 1.667*** (0.079) 1.093*** (0.071) −0.807*** 0.769*** (0.118) −0.245*** (0.059) Continued. l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u a d e v / a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / / 3 4 2 5 1 1 6 4 4 3 4 5 a d e v _ a _ 0 0 0 9 5 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 82 Asian Development Review Table A.3. Continued. OLS radianceit (1) 64.250*** (1.652) Yes Yes OLS radianceit (2) 0.003 (0.220) 0.401*** (0.144) 140.600*** (10.220) Yes Yes Yes OLS radianceit (3) −0.214*** (0.032) −1.468*** (0.222) 3.105*** (0.684) Yes Yes Yes Yes 432,674 19,667 432,674 19,667 373,673 19,667 secondwaveit thirdwaveit Constant Place ﬁxed effects Satellite effects Control variables Lagged variables Observations Places OLS = ordinary least squares, sd = standard deviation, SEZ = Special Economic Zone. Notes: Reported coefﬁcients are marginal effects. Standard errors are reported in parentheses. *** = p < 0.01, ** = p < 0.05, and * = p < 0.1. Squared terms are included for the following geography and climate variables: ln(dist to roadi), ln(dist to raili), ln(dist to oceani), ln(dist to wateri), ln(dist to adborderit), ln(dist to centeri), ln(altitudei), ln(raini), temperaturei, and sd temperaturei. All distance measures in the empirical estimation are in meters. Source: Authors’ calculations. Table A.4. Estimation Results for Dynamic Tobit by Categories (1) radianceit Nat = 1, Admin = 1 (2) radianceit Nat = 1, Admin = 1 (3) radianceit Nat = 1, Admin = 1 (4) radianceit Nat = 1, Admin = 1 radianceit-1 radianceit-2 radianceit-3 radiancei1992 ln(popdensi1990) ln(dist to roadi) ln(dist to raili) ln(dist to oceani) ln(dist to wateri) 0.487*** (0.005) 0.167*** (0.005) 0.024*** (0.005) 0.161*** (0.006) 0.180*** (0.044) −0.324*** (0.025) −0.004 (0.028) −0.342*** (0.040) −0.118*** (0.027) 0.530*** (0.003) 0.142*** (0.003) 0.030*** (0.003) 0.207*** (0.004) 0.084*** (0.027) −0.315*** (0.016) −0.131*** (0.018) −0.245*** (0.021) −0.140*** (0.018) 0.263*** (0.003) 0.106*** (0.003) 0.090*** (0.003) 0.079*** (0.003) 0.103** (0.040) −0.294*** (0.022) −0.083*** (0.025) −0.320*** (0.035) −0.113*** (0.026) 0.226*** (0.002) 0.090*** (0.002) 0.124*** (0.002) 0.092*** (0.002) 0.094*** (0.022) −0.387*** (0.016) −0.046*** (0.017) −0.236*** (0.022) −0.061*** (0.018) Continued. l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u a d e v / a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / / 3 4 2 5 1 1 6 4 4 3 4 5 a d e v _ a _ 0 0 0 9 5 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Natural City Growth in the PRC 83 Table A.4. Continued. (1) radianceit Nat = 1, Admin = 1 −0.268*** (0.055) −0.003 (0.031) 0.159*** (0.048) −0.040*** (0.010) 0.050 (0.037) −0.561*** (0.173) 0.147*** (0.034) 0.031 (0.060) −1.068*** (0.302) 0.985*** (0.281) 0.156 (0.223) −0.188 (0.203) 1.323*** (0.192) −3.040*** (0.388) −0.810*** (0.185) −0.380*** (0.135) 11.90*** (3.227) Yes 51,995 5,957 (2) radianceit Nat = 1, Admin = 1 (3) radianceit Nat = 1, Admin = 1 0.123*** (0.040) 0.036 (0.022) 0.039 (0.037) 0.014* (0.008) 0.090*** (0.024) −0.778*** (0.122) 0.220*** (0.029) −0.056 (0.040) −2.844*** (0.165) 3.073*** (0.162) 1.573*** (0.112) −1.034*** (0.102) 0.476*** (0.086) −0.198 (0.159) −0.471*** (0.072) 0.224*** (0.066) 21.32*** (3.970) Yes 55,785 4,781 0.219*** (0.044) 0.025 (0.029) −0.188*** (0.052) −0.012 (0.010) 0.275*** (0.038) −0.636*** (0.189) 0.151*** (0.035) −0.272*** (0.062) 1.398*** (0.272) −0.559** (0.252) −0.708*** (0.243) 0.190 (0.227) 1.076*** (0.173) −2.047*** (0.293) −1.362*** (0.169) 0.534*** (0.120) 25.09*** (2.600) Yes 159,772 12,330 (4) radianceit Nat = 1, Admin = 1 −0.290*** (0.038) −0.026 (0.021) −0.364*** (0.039) 0.025*** (0.008) −0.009 (0.025) −1.503*** (0.130) −0.101*** (0.031) −0.159*** (0.043) −0.122 (0.090) 0.822*** (0.085) 0.331*** (0.077) −0.930*** (0.078) −0.244*** (0.089) 0.835*** (0.142) −0.362*** (0.072) 0.688*** (0.069) 15.14*** (2.921) Yes 106,121 14,040 ln(dist to centeri) ln(dist to adborderi) ln(altitudei) longitudei latitudei ln(raini) temperaturei sd temperaturei hukouit smallit mediumit largeit SEZit ﬁrstwaveit secondwaveit thirdwaveit Constant Satellite effects Observations Places Nat = natural city, Admin = within administrative boundary, sd = standard deviation, SEZ = Special Economic Zone. Notes: Reported coefﬁcients are marginal effects. Standard errors are reported in parentheses. *** = p < 0.01, ** = p < 0.05, and * = p < 0.1. Squared terms are included for the following geography and climate variables: ln(dist to roadi), ln(dist to raili), ln(dist to oceani), ln(dist to wateri), ln(dist to adborderit), ln(dist to centeri), ln(altitudei), ln(raini), temperaturei, and sd temperaturei. All columns include satellite effects. All distance measures in the empirical estimation are in meters. Source: Authors’ calculations. l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u a d e v / a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / / 3 4 2 5 1 1 6 4 4 3 4 5 a d e v _ a _ 0 0 0 9 5 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 84 Asian Development Review Table A.5. Robustness—Transition Matrix of Counterfactual ln(dist to roadi) Deﬁnition: Nat = 1 if radiance > 50, Nat = 0 if radiance < 50 Counterfactual: ln(dist to roadi) Baseline Nat = 1 Nat = 0 Total Nat = 1 99.87(2007) 99.70(2012) 99.51(2017) 99.48(2022) 99.50(2027) 0.49(2007) 2.77(2012) 7.94(2017) 18.58(2022) 35.03(2027) 28.71(2007) 39.02(2012) 51.50(2017) 67.11(2022) 82.16(2027) Nat = 0 0.13(2007) 0.30(2012) 0.49(2017) 0.52(2022) 0.50(2027) 99.51(2007) 97.23(2012) 92.06(2017) 81.42(2022) 64.97(2027) 71.29(2007) 60.98(2012) 48.50(2017) 32.89(2022) 17.84(2027) Total 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 Nat = natural city. Note: In addition to the radiance threshold, the City Clustering Algorithm condition is a necessary condition for a place to be assigned as a natural city (Nat = 1). The City Clustering Algorithm condition implies that a place is near a cluster of places with average radiance greater or equal to the threshold. Source: Authors’ calculations. l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u a d e v / a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / / 3 4 2 5 1 1 6 4 4 3 4 5 a d e v _ a _ 0 0 0 9 5 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Natural City Growth in the PRC 85 Table A.6. Robustness—Transition Matrix of Counterfactual ln(dist to raili) Deﬁnition: Nat = 1 if radiance > 50, Nat = 0 if radiance < 50 Baseline Nat = 1 Nat = 0 Total Counterfactual: ln(dist to raili) Nat = 1 100.00(2007) 99.93(2012) 99.88(2017) 99.82(2022) 99.84(2027) 0.06(2007) 0.52(2012) 1.54(2017) 3.65(2022) 6.31(2027) 28.43(2007) 37.70(2012) 48.32(2017) 61.34(2022) 74.68(2027) Nat = 0 0.00(2007) 0.07(2012) 0.12(2017) 0.18(2022) 0.16(2027) 99.94(2007) 99.48(2012) 98.46(2017) 96.35(2022) 93.69(2027) 71.57(2007) 62.30(2012) 51.68(2017) 38.66(2022) 25.32(2027) Total 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 Nat = natural city. Note: In addition to the radiance threshold, the City Clustering Algorithm condition is a necessary condition for a place to be assigned as a natural city (Nat = 1). The City Clustering Algorithm condition implies that a place is near a cluster of places with average radiance greater or equal to the threshold. Source: Authors’ calculations. l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u a d e v / a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / / 3 4 2 5 1 1 6 4 4 3 4 5 a d e v _ a _ 0 0 0 9 5 p d . f b y g u e s t t o n 0 8 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3
下载pdf