China's new urban clusters strategy for coordinated economic growth: Evidence from the sports industry

Document No. 46 proposes that the sports industry be regarded as an important force for promoting the sustainable development of the economy and society, that the sports industry be deployed to expand domestic demand and promote consumption, and that a five-trillion-CNY sports market be formed by 2025. In 2019, the State Council called for promoting the sports industry to become a pillar industry of the national economy , thereby establishing the sports industry's indispensable role in the overall economic development. The policy mechanism is an essential guarantee for their coordinated development because it promotes the integration between the sports industry and other industries and accelerates the scale effect in the sports industry. According to the National Statistical Classification of the Sports Industry , China sports lottery falls under the sports service sector. We combine the sports service from the annual statistics of the sports industry with the sales of China sports lottery. The location quotient is calculated as Eq: where, LQij denotes the location quotient of sports industry j in region i; eij denotes the added value of sports industry j in region i; ei denotes the GDP in region i; Ej denotes the added value of the national sports industry; and, E denotes the national GDP. If 0 LQ < 1, the sampled industrial agglomeration lags that of the national average; if LQ = 1, then the sampled industrial agglomeration is the same as the national average; and, if LQ > 1, then the sampled industrial agglomeration leads that of the national average. Particularly, the sports education market should be a robust, predictable sector to support various levels of urban cluster economies, such as the construction of new infrastructure, the creation of new full- and part-time jobs, and the implementation of new technologies [31, 32]. Moreover, as we recently argued, the Chinese path to sports modernization redefines the modernization theory, and the sports industry may usher in a new "Beyond GDP" form of modernization for China and globalization for the world.