The Complex System of Interprovincial Migration Flows in China, 1985–2015

Migration, as a spatial and temporal process, has played a significant role in urbanization and regional population growth. Traditional gravity models can be used to explain the “push-pull” forces between origins and destinations, but fail to explore the substantive space-time dynamics of complex migration systems owing to their independence assumption among migration flows. By incorporating spacetime interactions into gravity models, this research constructs a spatial dynamic panel model of flows and applies it to interprovincial migration flows in China to explore the mechanisms driving dynamic and complex migratory processes. The origin, destination, and network effects of GDP and population size are derived to measure the impacts of regional characteristics on migration flows across space-time scales. The results indicate that population size dominates the interprovincial migration process, which is considerably enhanced by strong space-time dependence. In addition, the spillover effects of regional factors at the early stage are greater than their origin and destination effects. From the perspective of a complex system, simultaneous positive and negative feedback among migration flows help the entire migration system to stay in an equilibrium state. A spatial dynamic panel model contributes to understanding the spacetime dynamics implicit in the complex migration process.