| The economic growth is difficult to achieve the balance among various regions in a country. The concentration of economic factors bring the scale economy effect in the process of development. Human being is the main body in the economy activity. The labor force is the most important economic factor. Economic activity is a multi-cycle process with population as its core. The population and labor force always move to some developed regions. As a result, the most massive migration is taking place in China, and it shows the process of spatial concentration of population and economic activities. Therefore, the paper studies the population migration, and its impact on the spatial pattern of population dynamic and the concentration of economic activities in China. In addition, the paper discusses the impact of population migration on the overall economic development, and the different effects on immigrant and emigrant areas.The key research questions in this thesis are as follows. First, the paper analyses status and characteristics of the agglomeration of population and economic activity on the regional-level, provincial-level and city-level in China based on the census data and economic statistics. Second, the study explore the impacts of the population migration on the change of spatial pattern population and economic activities, and the effect on the macro economic development by using a variety of research methods. Questions addressed are the followings. What are the impacts of population migration on the spatial allocation of labor resources, and the spatial distribution of population size and population aging? What are the rules of population migration and economic activity concentration? What are the effects of population migration on the overall economic development? What is the difference of the effects on the immigrant and emigrant areas, and on different types of cities? At last, based on the finding, some suggestions of policy on city planning, rural development, infrastructure investment, and basic public services supply are proposed.Main conclusions of the thesis are as follows. The most massive migration in China conforms to the general migration rules, with obvious direction selectivity and age selectivity. The labor migration is the main body of the most massive migration in China. Economic motives are the main reasons for causing migration. In addition, many migrants move from rural areas to the urban areas, from the less developed provinces to the more developed provinces, from some cities in Central China,Chengdu-Chongqing Area and Northern Jiangsu Province to the economic center cities and provincial capital in Central and Western China, and the three biggest urban agglomerations of China.Population migration becomes the dominant factor of the spatial distribution of China’s population size rather than mortality or fertility in the new situation of low natural increase. The proportion of population living in the Eastern China, the core cities and the three biggest urban agglomerations continues to rise, because of the obvious direction selectivity of the most massive population migration. Moreover, there have been occurrences of’negative population growth’in 37 cities between 1990 and 2000, and 86 cities between 2000 to 2010. In other words, the population of 1/3 cities have been reducing in the 10 years of the new century, most of which are in Central and Western China.Population migration has changed the spatial allocation of labor resources and employed persons under the overall situation of the gradual labor reduction in China. Labor continue to concentrate to some more developed provinces and cities, and become the important supplements to the labor market in these areas. On the contrary, the growth of labor resources is lower, even the amount is reducing in some labor exporting provinces, due to large-scale of out-migration.In addition, Population migration with obvious age selectivity has changed the spatial pattern of population ageing in China. Trends in population ageing in different regions across China are broadly consistent with regional levels of economic development before 2000. However the spatial patterns of ageing have been changing after 2000, especially after 2005, because of the dramatic growth in migrant population, which is highly age selective and concentrated in the developed regions. What is more interesting is that the elderly dependency ratio declines in 31 cities in the context of accelerated aging of the country’s population.Population migration improves the optimal allocation of labor force and other economic factors in space, and the positive effect on the economic development of the provinces in the Eastern China is greater than the negative effect of the provinces with large-scale of out-migration in Central and Western China. Thus, the most massive population migration has promoted China’s overall economic growth. However, the effects are distinct among the provinces with in-migration and the provinces with out-migration, and among different types of cities. For the provinces with tremendous in-flow of people, such as Guangdong, Shanghai, Beijing, Zhejiang, Jiangsu andTianjin, in-migration has a significant positive effect on local economic development. Anhui, Henan, Sichuan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Guizhou and Yunnan are the provinces with large-scale outward migration in Central and Western China. For Anhui, Henan and Jiangxi, the empirical results show that the coefficient is significantly positive, but the impact is very weak. For Hunan and Yunnan, the coefficient is negative but not significant. Most noteworthy, for Hubei, Sichuan and Guizhou the coefficient is significantly negative and the impact is not weak. It means that for some provinces with large-size of out-migration, the negative impact of the loss of human capital and labor force on local economy began to come out. The analysis on the city-level shows that the impact of migration on economic development of cities in Eastern China is greater than cities in Central and Western China, and the cities in the Three City Groups gain more agglomeration effect than the common cities.Compared with the United States and other developed countries, there are still some deviations in the spatial distribution of China’s domestic population and economic activities. The concentration of population is not high in some production concentrated regions. According to the objective economic rule, the process of population and economic activities spatial agglomeration will continue in the future.Main policy proposals by this thesis are as follows. Firstly, it may not be feasible, reasonable and effective to use too much administration means to limit the size of large cities. Secondly, agglomeration does not necessarily lead to continued expansion of the regional gap. With the improvement of economic level, the regional gap will experience a process of convergence after differentiation. Improving the relevant system to encourage population migration helps to narrow the regional gap. Thirdly, the characteristic and trend of population spatial concentration should be taken fully into account in urban planning and construction, to avoid the unnecessary waste or supply shortage. Lastly, there may be occurrences of gradually depression and even abandoned phenomenon in some villages, towns and even cities in the central and western regions, due to population reduction, serious loss of labor, infrastructure lack of economies of scale and other reasons. It needs response in advance.
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