Spatial relationship between population shrinking and land development in the Northeast China

Xueqin Wang ¹ Jiacheng Hu ² Shen Zhao ^3* Rui Hu ⁴

• ¹ School of Sociology and Population Studies, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing, China
• ² Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia
• ³ Policy Research Center, Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, Beijing, China
• ⁴ Business School, University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China

Analyzing the features of population shrinking and land development, as well as the spatial coordination relationship between population and land, has reference value for optimizing the allocation of land resources in shrinking areas. This paper analyzed space-time features about population shrinkage and land use in the Northeast China, where is a typical shrinking area in China. Further, it explored the spatial relationship between population shrinkage and land development based on correlation coefficient measurement method and coupling coordination model. The main results show that: (1) Both the total population and labor force in Northeast China shrank during 2010 and 2020, while the contribution of labor force to the whole population remained a level above the national average all the time. (2) Significant differences existed in population shrinkage types among county-level units, including absolute shrinkage type, labor-growth shrinkage type, labor-loss growth type and absolute growth type, etc., indicating that the change trend of the labor population and that of the total population are not exactly consistent. (3) The land-use intensity of county-level units has gradually increased, despite varying degrees of population loss from 2000 to 2020, presenting a paradoxical phenomenon of population loss and land spatial expansion. (4) In the vast majority of county-level units, the population changes are negatively correlated with the land-use intensity change speed, and have an uncoupled coordination relationship with it. (5) The match between population and land-use is stronger in regional central cities, and shows a spatial characteristic of decreasing from the center to the periphery. This study helps to reveal the relationship between population and land in typical shrinking areas of China, laying a certain foundation for seeking ways to achieve coordinated development between human and land.