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Mega‐city regions (MCRs) have emerged as the main spatial form of China's new urbanization strategy and become the basic spatial units participating in global and regional competition. However, MCRs are not equally capable of boosting regional economic development due to their different levels of development. Therefore, this paper adopts the concept of competitiveness as both a theoretical framework and an empirical model to evaluate the development status of China's MCRs. Based on a review of the existing literature, this paper proposes a multi‐tier evaluation system to calculate the competitiveness of 13 MCRs. The chosen indicators come from the six perspectives of economic development, human resources, infrastructural accessibility, integration into the global economy, capacity for scientific and technological innovation, and sustainable development. The results show that there are great disparities and regional inequalities in competitiveness across different MCRs. The Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, and Beijing–Tianjin–Tangshan MCRs are the first‐tier MCRs with the highest levels of development and have significant global influence as well. Chengdu–Chongqing, Shandong Peninsula, South‐central Liaoning, and Wuhan belong to the second‐tier of MCRs that show partial advantages and have significant regional influence. The remaining regions belong to the third‐ or fourth‐tier of MCRs that have relatively weak competitiveness. The competitiveness of MCRs largely depends on the concentration of core elements in core cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is mounting theoretical and empirical research that explains the reasons for the rapid expansion of China's export trade, but they mostly ignore the effects of cultural differences. To fill this gap, this paper provides an empirical investigation of how cultural diversity affects the sustainable development of trade, which is defined as the goal of maintaining certain volume of trade and making trade growth sustainable. The findings are as follows. (1) Cultural diversity can significantly promote the sustainable development of trade. (2) Entrepreneurship is the possible channel wherein cultural diversity affects the sustainable development of trade, including innovation entrepreneurship and business entrepreneurship. (3) Further studies demonstrate that economic openness has a significant moderating effect on the relationship between cultural diversity and the sustainable development of trade. That is, the higher the level of openness of a city, the stronger the promotion of cultural diversity to the sustainable development of trade. This study not only deepens understanding on the relationship between culture and trade but also provides important policy implications for many countries that have high migration rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses China's provincial border counties as samples to explore the role played by administrative boundaries in uneven regional economic development. The results indicate that the gap between provincial border counties and other regions is increasing and that economic diffusion to provincial border counties from developed regions is extremely weak. Moreover, provincial border counties have become economically backward. A regression analysis model that includes certain novel factors that are likely to influence economic growth confirms the significant effects of government intervention and administrative boundaries on economic growth in provincial border counties. This paper concludes that administrative boundaries' effects should be nullified by limiting preferential development policies and implementing policies that instead help provincial border counties engage in sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]