Development of the Regional Financial Centers in China: A Quantitative Study Based on the Province-level Data

Abstract

In the era of globalization and information proliferation, China is undergoing a remarkable economic restructuring and financial industries’ development. This trend of the phenomenon is due to the fact of implications from the financial agglomeration and information spillover, which induced the financial centers’ transformation in this vital circumstance. Previous scholars focus more on the western countries’ financial centers evolution, and they neglect some deep insights on Asia regions. In the context of this research, we will concentrate on East Asia, particularly China, and to conduct a quantitative analysis of financial centers development based on SPSS application. Since Shanghai is designated as the international financial center and Beijing tends to be admitted as the national financial center in China, however, there are still some insufficient perspectives on the regional financial centers within the China financial centers hierarchies. In this research, we will implement the quantitative methods to evaluate the ability of major provinces in the development of regional financial centers in China. The sample frame is derived from 19 coastal and middle region provinces excluding Beijing, Shanghai and western region provinces. The prime methods of the research are based on the exploratory factor analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis using SPSS, with the combination of some parameters; we can eventually make the general ranking of the corresponding provinces to develop the regional financial centers, as well as carry out the classification of the selected provinces hierarchies. On the whole, the application of the quantitative analysis significantly enhances the precise and holistic evaluation of regional financial centers development in China based on province-level data and that Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shandong and Zhejiang are identified as the next generation of robust candidates for China regional financial centers.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2016.v7n3s1p374