Space, scale, and regional inequality in provincial China: A spatial filtering approach

• This paper studies regional inequality and development in China's Guangdong province.
• It applies a spatial filtering approach that quantifies the exact relationship between spatial dependence and inequality.
• Globalization, decentralization and marketization are significant driving forces behind the uneven development.
• The impacts of different mechanisms are sensitive to the core-periphery structure in Guangdong and the temporal dimension.

This paper investigates regional inequality and development in China's Guangdong province by employing the multi-scale and multi-mechanism framework. The study further examines the relationship between space, scale, and regional inequality by applying a spatial filtering method that eliminates spatial dependence of the data and quantifies the extent to which spatial effects have contributed to regional inequality at multiple scales. The results suggest that over 90% of the divide between the core of the Pearl River Delta (PRD) and the periphery areas of Guangdong province can be explained by the effect of strengthening spatial dependence. By incorporating spatial filters in space-time models, we also reveal the space-time and core-periphery heterogeneities of development mechanisms. Our study confirms that the integration of a multi-scale and multi-mechanism framework and rigorous spatial analysis methods, such as spatial filtering and space-time modeling, helps better understand the complexity of regional development in China.