The Hinterland of Guangzhou City: Definition and its Change

The article selected four kinds of indexes for assessing the strength of cities, applied the cluster analysis for determining the central place in the same level with Guangzhou. Then, it selected the principal factors by principal component analysis, and calculated the influencing boundary of Guangzhou city using the influence index. According to the flows analysis, the hinterland of Guangzhou city which correspond with the pan-pearl river delta, was divided into the direct hinterland and the competitive hinterland, the former includes Guangdong, Guangxi , Hunan, Yunnan, Sichuan, Guizhou and Hainan, and the latter comprise Chongqing, Jiangxi, Fujian and Hubei. Then the paper defined the hinterland boundary of Guangzhou city in 1985 and 1994, respectively, compared the changes of hinterland of Guangzhou city in recent 20 years and analyzed the force of the changes. Lastly, based on the background of hinterland expansion of Guangzhou, we brought forth the means to expand the hinterland of Guangzhou city, showed that the development of pan-pearl river delta has important impact on the hinterland expansion of Guangzhou.