| With development of China's economy since reforms and opening up policy, the regional economic differentiation in China has been gradually widened. So, with in academic and governmental circles there have been many relevant researches in this regard in recent years. However, there still are arguments in how to measure actual difference of regional development, and what exactly the notion and degree of China's unbalanced regional development mean. Consequently, it is difficult in decision making of policy. Comparatively speaking, major concerns in economic circles are the study of the model of unbalanced regional economic development or the analysis of divergence. Geography mainly studies regional differences and policy exploration. But on the whole, no matter economy or geography, the selection of indicators is based on GDP per capita or income per capita and so on. The unbalanced regional economic development is unequal to unbalanced regional economic development, besides unbalanced regional development, it also includes unbalanced in social development and in human development. So, to evaluate it just in economic indicators is not enough. First, essentially speaking, the aim of regional development is to improve the level of well-being for people. Second, some non-economic variables of well-being are different from economic variables in space. It can be seen that the most important is not the regional unbalance in economic variables but the analysis about the regional unbalance of well-being variables. Accordingly, analyzing regional unbalance from the level of well-being is the basic of analysis of regional unbalance.From well-being and geography of well-being, the study of unbalanced regional development should concern about the three dimensions of well-being, space and time, which is to study the unbalance of the development level in spatial dimension and in temporal dimension. The geography of well-being puts the spatial unbalance of well-being as a core, which provides theoretical supports for the study of unbalanced regional development. But it must be pointed out that geography of well-being in the past just remains in the level of describing the spatial differences in the level of well-being, and it is not enough. At one hand, well-being is a pluralistic umbrella concept, and has two understandings of perspective—subjective and objective, and put the good life of people as a core. So, in order to study well-being deeply, different research approaches in geography must be held together and we should rebuild research framework of geography of well-being from the perspectives of positivism, humanism and structuralism. On the other hand, from the relation between well-being and regional development, it is necessary to analyze linked mechanism between well-being and regional development deeply, to expand the evaluation of geography of well-being in regional development research so as to find a way to study the well-being level of spatial differences.So, inspired by Geo-spatial ideas, this thesis forms a key concept—well-being space, and regards space as an embedded key point, integrates subjective and objective well-being concepts and puts subjective perception and objective measure together. On the basis of a comprehensive understanding of well-being, this thesis regards well-being space as a media, integrates spatial perspective and regional research as a basis to evaluate unbalanced regional development so as to analyze unbalanced regional development on the basis of well-being space.Above all, to achieve the goal of analysis unbalanced regional development on the basis of well-being space, the article includes four parts:The first part is an introduction and summary, including Chapter1 and Chapter2. of which the first chapter studies the background significance of the topic and analytical perspective, summarizes main research approaches, content framework and main creativity. Chapter2 recalls and states advances research in unbalanced regional development and geography of well-being. The second part is the theoretical and framework, including Chapter3, Chapter4 and Chapter5. In this, the third chapter mainly studies well-being conceptualization, paradigm and methodology. Chapter4 studies rebuild research framework of the geography of well-being - the WOSTEEM framework from the basic geographical philosophy. Chapter5 firstly discusses the theoretical basis and concepts of space, and puts forward conceptual framework of well-being space on the basis of well-being space research, studies the conception and dimensions of well-being space therefore. Chapter5 secondly forms an analytical framework of unbalanced regional development on the basis of well-being space. Part3 including Chapter6 and Chapter7 is an empirical study. In which Chapter6 studies firstly China's unbalanced regional development on the basis of provinces, then evaluates China's regional well-being space, divides different types and studies the space-time evolvement by building an evaluation framework of well-being space and using the human development index of environmental sensitivity, concentration index, GIS and so on. And finally it analyzes the evolution routes of China's regional well-being space in quadrant diagrams. Chapter7 takes urban agglomeration in Yangtze River delta as an example to discuss about unbalanced regional development in well-being space and to evaluate well-being space of urban agglomeration in Yangtze River Delta by using AHP and TOPSIS methods and to analyze its main decisive factors. At last, it explores 16 Yangtze River Delta's cities' well-being space on the basis of comprehensive evaluation of the well-being space and quadrant diagram method. The last part-part4 is the summary. It combines mainly theoretical analysis and empirical studies all together to summarize the main arguments, theoretical accomplishments and the main results.The main arguments of this thesis are:①the regional differences lie among provinces in China, but this kind of difference is decreasing from 1990 to 2005;②the gap of the non-economic well-being space is relatively small, and smaller than economic well-being space;③well-being space in western China grows fast followed by central China, and eastern China grows most slowly from 1990 and 2005. The eastern China which has a higher score in well-being space is punished by environmental pollution, so the growth rate is slow;④the level of China's regional well-being space is improving gradually, experiencing from low well-being to economic well-being in advance and then to high well-being of coordination. The eastern, middle and western China have different evolution routes and features;⑤well-being space in the Yangtze River Delta forms two main core areas: "Shanghai—Suzhou" and "Hangzhou-Shaoxing-Ningbo", and actually on Taihu, The north-western city's well-being space is poorer, especially in the north, however, the southeastern city's well-being space is better;⑥according to the analysis of well-being space and its determinants in Yangtze River Delta cities, "high well-being space and high determinants", "low well-being space and low determinants" and " high well-being space and low determinants" three kinds of cities have been found.The main innovation of this thesis includes:①on the basis of analysis on philosophy of Geography and research approach, through epistemology, ontology and ethics of geography, this thesis rebuilds a new research framework about Geography of well-being, namely, a new WOSTEEM framework, which has some theoretical values and innovations;②defined well-being space and formed a new research theoretical framework of well-being so as to construct a evaluation model of well-being space to analyze unbalanced development in China and Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration;③a kind of mechanism linking regional development to well-being space has been built up, which is helpful for linking up regional development and well-being space.
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