Borderland Economic Resilience under COVID-19: Evidence from China–Russia Border Regions

Yuxin Li, Pingyu Zhang (), Kevin Lo, Juntao Tan and Qifeng Yang
Additional contact information
Yuxin Li: Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130102, China
Pingyu Zhang: Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130102, China
Kevin Lo: Department of Geography, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong 999077, China
Juntao Tan: School of Geography, Geomatics and Planning & Urban-Rural Integration Development Research Institute, Jiangsu Normal University, Xuzhou 221116, China
Qifeng Yang: Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130102, China

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 20, 1-22

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has had a great impact on the global economy and trade, and border regions have been hit severely because of their high dependency on foreign trade. To understand better the economic impact of COVID-19 on border regions, we developed a COVID-19 economic resilience analytical framework and empirically examined 10 Chinese-Russian border cities in Northeast China. We quantitatively analyzed five dimensions of economic resilience, distinguished four types of shock, and examined the determinants of economic resilience. The results show that: (1) the COVID-19 pandemic has wide-ranging impacts in the border areas, with import–export trade and retail sales of consumer goods being the most vulnerable and sensitive to the shock. The whole economy of the border areas is in the downward stage of the resistance period; (2) from a multi-dimensional perspective, foreign trade and consumption are the most vulnerable components of the borderland economic system, while industrial resilience and income resilience have improved against the trend, showing that they have good crisis resistance; (3) borderland economic resilience is a spatially heterogeneous phenomenon, with each border city showing different characteristics; (4) economic openness, fiscal expenditure, and asset investment are the key drivers of economic resilience, and the interaction between the influencing factors presents a nonlinear and bi-factor enhancement of them. The findings shed light on how border economies can respond to COVID-19, and how they are useful in formulating policies to respond to the crisis.

Keywords: economic resilience; COVID-19; border region; spatial differentiation; determinants; China–Russia border (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/20/13042/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/20/13042/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:20:p:13042-:d:938930

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().