Investigating China’s Mid-Yangtze River economic growth region using a spatial network growth model

China’s Mid-Yangtze River city region (MYR) has been designated as a national strategic growth region intended to reverse the slow-down in economic transition. However, there has been a lack of attention to the internal spatial organisation of the region’s growth capacity associated with its inter-city relations. This article combines an urban network approach and a spatial econometric framework to not only examine the local contribution to growth of MYR cities’ indigenous factors, cross-territorial flows and positions in the regional capital network, but also to estimate their spatial spillovers. The analysis sheds light on the interplay between spatial proximity and network capital in the regional growth process. Recent growth is found to be significantly influenced by indigenous capital stock, labour cost and technological advances, by commodity and self-investment flows, and by ‘authority’ and ‘hub’ network capital, associated with coexisting endogenous and exogenous spillovers. The findings infer that institutional capacity in organising endowment mobilities will be important for policy to promote coordinated development. 中国长江中游城市地区（MYR）已被指定为国家战略增长区，目的是扭转经济转型的放缓。然而，人们对与城市间关系相关的区域增长能力的内部空间组织缺乏关注。本文将城市网络方法和空间计量经济学框架相结合，不仅考察了MYR城市本土因素、跨地域流动和在区域资本网络中的地位对增长的贡献，还评估了它们的空间溢出效应。我们的分析揭示了空间邻近性和网络资本在区域增长过程中的相互作用。我们发现，最近的增长受到本地资本存量、劳动力成本和技术进步、商品和自我投资流动以及“权威”和“枢纽”网络资本的重大影响，而这些都与内生和外生溢出的共存相关。研究结果推断，组织禀赋流动的制度能力对于促进协调发展的政策而言非常重要。