The Changing Geography of Domestic Financial City Network in China, 1995–2015

Based on longitudinal office distribution data on top domestic financial enterprises, this study explores the evolution of China's financial city network in the last two decades by means of a social network analysis. The position of each city in financial city network is evaluated from two aspects which are external financial resources attraction and headquarters financial development based, respectively, on urban weighted indegree and urban weighted outdegree. Taking these two aspects together, the top echelons of the financial city network can be regarded as potential national or regional financial centers. Furthermore, by means of a panel data regression analysis, determining factors of financial city network evolution are explored from perspectives of location, institution, and social‐economy. We find that most cities have witnessed significant changes in city position, especially in terms of external financial resources attraction, and the influencing factors of financial development vary by region due to the disparities in regional financial development environments.