ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Agricultural and Food Economics
Regional Differences and Dynamic Evolution of the Modernization Level of China's Fishery Industry Chain
Provisionally accepted
- Qingdao Agricultural University, Qingdao, China
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Introduction:China's fisheries industry chain(FIC) modernization faces bottlenecks such as weak infrastructure, insufficient regional coordination, and limited resilience, with prominent issues of uneven regional development. However, there is currently a lack of systematic research on its regional disparity patterns and dynamic evolution mechanisms. This research gap restricts the in-depth understanding of high-quality fisheries development pathways and the formulation of effective policies. Methods:To systematically reveal the regional differentiation and evolution laws of the modernization level of China's FIC, this study constructed a comprehensive evaluation index system covering four dimensions: foundation, resilience, coordination, and sustainability. Based on panel data from 27 provinces in China from 2016 to 2023, it comprehensively applied methods including the entropy weight method, Dagum Gini coefficient, Local Moran's I, kernel density estimation, and spatial Markov chain to conduct multi-dimensional analysis of the modernization level, regional differences, spatial correlation, and dynamic evolution of the FIC. Results and discussion:The results show that: (1) The national modernization level of the FIC has steadily improved but with fluctuations, and the development of each dimension is unbalanced; (2) The overall regional differences show a narrowing trend, and inter-regional differences are the main source; (3) The modernization level of the FIC exhibits significant positive spatial agglomeration; (4) The modernization level of the FIC presents a stepped distribution of "Eastern China > Central China > Western China"; (5) The hierarchical structure of the modernization level of the FIC is generally stable, with a low possibility of cross-level transfer, and high-level regions have a positive spatial spillover effect on adjacent regions. Research Significance:Theoretically, this study constructs a comprehensive evaluation framework for the modernization of the industrial chain applicable to the fishery field, providing methodological reference for related research. Practically, it accurately identifies the sources of regional differences and the mechanism of spatial dependence, offering empirical basis for optimizing regional resource allocation, i iManuscript 9751words, 9 charts and graphs formulating differentiated coordination policies, and promoting high-quality and sustainable development of the fishery industry. It also provides reference value for other developing countries in advancing the modernization of the agricultural industrial chain.
Keywords: Modernization of fishery industry chain, regional differences, spatial correlation, Dynamic evolution, Entropy method
Received: 22 Sep 2025; Accepted: 26 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Zhang and 李. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: 敏 李
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