Regional Development Research in China: A Roadmap to 2050

　　Regional development plays a vital role in the modernization of all countries, and is of great significance in the implementation of the scientific outlook on development and the construction of harmonious society in China. In the next 30 to 50 years, global climate change and economic globalization will have increasingly substantial influence on regional development in China and regional response and reaction will be an integrated choice to adapt to the restriction of carbon emission reduction and the supporting conditions of “two types of resources and two markets”. At that time, the population of China will be over 1.5 billion, the 70% of which will live in urban areas. As a result, the land demand of food security, ecological security and urbanization will continue to increase, and urbanization and regional development will be confronted with a core task of continuously adjusting and restructuring the interactive relationship between human and the natural system. Under the combined influence of state power and market force, the spatial agglomeration and dispersion processes of population and industries will be intensified significantly, and the spatial pattern of regional development based on the division of territorial function will be formed. Regional development will have increasingly enriched contents and multiple objectives. The interaction between regions at different spatial scales will tend to be diversified.

　　Regional development research is a burgeoning interdisciplinary field in China with distinctive features of comprehensiveness, spatial diversity, time variability and uncertainty. It contains 6 major modules: modern methods and techniques in regional analysis, which is the methodological basis of the whole research; the affecting factors of regional development process and their driving mechanisms; theories on the distribution of different social and economic sectors; the spatial organization principles of different types of regions; theories on the formation and spatial-temporal evolution of regional development pattern; the policy system for regulating human spatial behavior and territorial function.

　　Based on the analysis of regional development tendency and future scientific demand, the major tasks in the short run (up to 2020) are to reveal regional response and spatial process under economic globalization and global climate change, to improve the spatial recognition system of territorial function, to develop theories and methods on the processes of inter-regional material and energy flow, the agglomeration and dispersion of population and industries as well as ecological compensation and financial transfer payment, in order to build a data collection network and an information platform for the support of regional development simulation. In the mid-term period (up to 2030), the major tasks are to understand the physical basis, material ensurance, economic and social process and environmental effects of regional sustainable development, to discuss the spatial pattern of economic growth and social development in different development phases in the future, to investigate the regional development mechanism and tendency in the “three-dimensional objective space of economy-society-ecosystem” and the scientific process and model of urbanization in China, to construct function zones in conformity with the principle of coordinated regional development and the underlying regional planning and policy support system. The main objective is to develop different types of regional sustainable development models under the support of spatial analysis and simulation technique and decision-making support system for the guidance of practical work. In the long run (up to 2050), the major tasks are to explore the interactive mechanism between environment and development and between their various elements, to reveal the structural features and evolutionary principles of man-earth areal system, to develop the theoretical system of man-earth and environment-society dynamics for wide application in the simulation and decision-making support system of urbanization and regional development, to establish optimal land security pattern on the basis of ecological security pattern at different spatial scales, and to carry out large-scale empirical researches on cross-border regional cooperation and development issues.

　　The Chinese Academy of Sciences will strengthen its function as “think tank” in central formulation of regional development strategy through the development of regional development theories, methods, data and technical platform. In addition, it will build the “Simulation and Decision Support System for Regional Sustainable Development in China” and a world-class research base of regional sustainable development based on the combination of long-term research plan and short-term research project.