Characteristics and micro-mechanisms of cross-border connections among development zones in their“fourth transition”

Development zones in China have been undergoing a series of transformations in the past decades, termed as the “three transitions”. This is followed by a new wave of transformation observed in some well-developed development zones in regions such as the Yangtze River Delta, evidenced by the formation of networks among these development zones at the regional level. These cross-boundary connections usually take the forms of industrial cooperation, the co-built industrial parks and policy sharing, which allows development zones to optimize the allocation of resources and thus improve productivity. While studies have revealed valuable insights into the cooperation and connections among development zones, few have investigated the phenomenon with the consideration of its relationship with the“three transitions”and thus fail to reveal its significance to the spatial transformation in contemporary China. In addition, previous studies performing quantitative measurements of these networks tend to use methods such as gravity models to approximate the connections, and less attention has been paid to more specific and tangible connections such as production chains and transport networks. Also, few studies have examined the factors affecting the formation and the evolution of these networks, e.g. how do distance, administrative level, and the GDP of cities where the development zones are located shape the network. In this context, this paper situates the formation of the networks in the series of previous transitions and proposes the emergence of the“fourth transition”of development zones in China. Following this, we take the state-level economic and technological development zone in the core area of the Yangtze River Delta region as an example and measure the network among these zones by adopting a corporate organization approach that has been widely used in intercity network research. After a brief description of its evolutionary characteristics with the application of social network analysis, we explain its micro-mechanism using stochastic actor-oriented models. The result shows that the“fourth transition”serves as a strategy of development zones to break through the limit of urban boundaries and seek new opportunities at the regional scale, which can also be understood as a new approach to regional integration. In the Yangtze River Delta region, the growth of the network is accelerating and the core-periphery pattern has been more evident over time, with the better-connected development zones concentrated in northern Zhejiang and southern Jiangsu. This is influenced by factors such as network effects, the attributes of development zones and the city in which they are located, as well as the geographical proximity of parent enterprises to development zones.