Research on Trade Economic Geography, co-authored by Professor He Canfei, Dean of the School of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, and Associate Professor Yang Rudai from the School of Economics, Peking University, has been officially published by Economic Science Press.

Research on Trade Economic Geography

Key Highlights

1. How have the macroscopic patterns of China’s foreign trade taken shape and evolved?

2. How do Chinese enterprises enter or exit export markets?

3. How do Chinese enterprises expand export markets?

4. How does China’s foreign trade reshape the geography of regional industries?

5. What is the economic resilience of China’s foreign trade?

Environmental Economic Geography in China, compiled by the research team led by Professor He Canfei, Dean of the School of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, has been published by Springer. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose, a renowned economic geographer, Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and editorial board member of leading international journals including Economic Geography, wrote the preface for the book. He noted that this book provides methodological support for addressing environmental issues from the perspective of economic geography. Policymakers, researchers and students can learn how to balance economic development and environmental protection through this work.

Environmental Economic Geography in China

Key Highlights

1. Phenomenon Analysis: The book examines the spatio-temporal evolution of pollution-intensive industries and environmental pollution in China, as well as the correlation between the two.

2. Mechanism Exploration:

• Local scale: Regional economic activities are embedded in social contexts. Local institutional factors affect the environment by influencing enterprise behaviors. The book explores how environmental regulations impact air quality and sulfur dioxide emissions, and how economic transformation changes air pollution.

• Global scale: Globalization has not only brought China the dividends of comparative advantages, but also led to the invisible transfer of industrial pollution. The book analyzes the impacts of trade and regional division of labor on industrial pollution, and how export upgrading helps improve environmental quality.

Evolutionary Economic Geography in China, compiled by Professor He Canfei’s team, was published by Springer in 2019. Ron Boschma, a world-leading evolutionary economic geographer, Professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and editorial board member of international journals such as Papers in Regional Science, wrote the preface. He commented that this book points out new directions and contributes Chinese insights to the future development of evolutionary economic geography in both theoretical and empirical research, and is a must-read work. Adopting theories of evolutionary economic geography to analyze China’s industrial development, the book charts new paths for the discipline and serves as a valuable reference for the study of evolutionary economic geography.

Evolutionary Economic Geography in China

Key Highlights

1. Drawing on evolutionary concepts including path dependence, proximity, product space, and related/unrelated diversification, the book conducts extensive empirical studies centered on China. It focuses on the interactions among firm dynamics, industrial changes and regional evolution. The research finds that many regions in China are also constrained by path dependence, similar to regions in the United States and Europe.

2. The book addresses topics rarely covered in existing evolutionary economic geography research, such as environmental issues and inequality. Environmental sustainability and socio-economic inequality are major challenges facing China and the world, and will remain priorities for future research and policymaking. It is therefore essential to explore these critical issues from an evolutionary perspective.

3. Focusing on the role of institutions and governments at different spatial scales, the book features distinct Chinese characteristics. National policies play positive roles in various forms across multiple spatial scales, creating favorable conditions for industrial and regional development.

Author Profiles

Economic Geography Book Series by He Canfei’s Research Team

1. He Canfei, Zhou Yi (2016). Research on Environmental Economic Geography. Science Press.

2. He Canfei (2017). Research on Transitional Economic Geography. Economic Science Press.

3. He Canfei (2018). Research on Evolutionary Economic Geography. Economic Science Press.

4. He, Canfei & Zhu, Shengjun (2019). Evolutionary Economic Geography in China. Springer.

5. He Canfei, Yang Rudai (2020). Research on Trade Economic Geography. Economic Science Press.

6. He, Canfei & Mao, Xiyan (2020). Environmental Economic Geography in China. Springer.

7. He Canfei (2021). Advanced Economic Geography. The Commercial Press (forthcoming).