ABSTRACT
As a large country with an ancient civilization, China has a continuous experience of city networks through to modern times, when the Qing Dynasty was forced to open the country to the world economy in the second half of the 19th century following defeat in the Opium War (Taylor and Hoyler, 2008). At this time, in the course of the development of a capitalist industry and commerce, Shanghai, Tianjin, Dalian, Qingdao, Guangzhou and other modern industrial and commercial cities along the eastern coast developed rapidly, and some of them outgrew traditional inland cities such as Beijing, Nanjing and Chengdu. Furthermore, with the further development of capitalist industry and commerce, the first and most famous Yangtze River Delta metropolitan area with Shanghai as core-city developed conspicuously. During this period, dense urban economic corridors began to emerge in superior geographical locations such as the Middle-Lower Yangtze Area and the Pearl River Delta. However, urban development was very slow in the western areas of the country with its poor transportation links (Williams and Chan, 2008).
