How New Quality Productive Forces Interact with High-Quality Economic Development: Spatiotemporal Evidence from China

Abstract

Promoting high-quality economic development has become one of the key factors of China’s economic transformation. In this context, the concept of new quality productive forces has been proposed to characterize a development paradigm driven by innovation, digital transformation, industrial upgrading, and ecological sustainability. Understanding the interaction between new quality productive forces and high-quality economic development is therefore crucial for assessing structural transformation and regional development performance. This study investigates the coupling and coordination relationship between new quality productive forces and high-quality economic development in China from spatiotemporal and dynamic perspectives. Using panel data for 30 provincial-level regions from 2013 to 2022, comprehensive evaluation index systems are constructed for both systems. The entropy-weighted TOPSIS method is employed to measure their overall development levels, and a coupling coordination degree model is applied to evaluate their interactive relationship. Regional disparities are further decomposed using the Dagum Gini coefficient, while kernel density estimation and spatial Markov chain analysis are used to examine distributional dynamics, state transitions, and spatial spillover effects. The results show that the overall coupling coordination level in China has increased steadily over the study period, although it remains relatively low. Significant regional heterogeneity is observed, with eastern regions consistently exhibiting higher coordination levels than central and western regions. Subsystem analysis indicates that new quality labor is more closely aligned with high-quality economic development, whereas new quality means of production represent the main constraint, particularly in less developed regions. Further analysis reveals that interregional disparities are the primary source of spatial inequality in coupling coordination. Moreover, spatial Markov chain results identify strong path dependence and significant neighborhood effects, suggesting the existence of club convergence driven by spatial spillovers. Overall, the findings indicate that the coordinated evolution of new quality productive forces and high-quality economic development is jointly shaped by internal structural conditions and external spatial interactions, providing empirical insights for promoting more balanced and sustainable regional development in transitional economies.