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.