Abstract Migration facilitates mobility of social resources, having a direct effect on national and regional development. Accordingly, it has been a long-lasting research topic. However, few research depicts the successive changes of China's recent migration. Furthermore, existing publications fail to reveal the network characteristics of China's migration. Here we analyzed the volume changes and spatial pattern dynamics of China's interprovincial migration from 1995 to 2010, adopting the social network analysis. The data derived from 2000 National Population Census, 2005 1% Population Sample Survey, and 2010 National Population Census were employed. Results show:1) The migration volume in China has been increasing sharply since 1995, with enormous quantity gap between different provinces. The in-migration rates of Shanghai and Jiangsu have saw a stable increase trend; furthermore, the out-migration rates of Henan and Anhui have undergone a remarkable increase trend. 2) The migration network in China has thirteen core nodes like Beijing, Shanghai, Anhui, Sichuan and so on, which is characterized by coherence, convergence and regional disequilibrium. 3) Three dominating migration destinations in China are located in Beijing-Tianjin Metropolitan Region, Yangtze River Delta and Guangdong province, while most key origins are central provinces, like Anhui, Sichuan, Henan, Hunan etc. Our findings suggest that there are significant spatial variations of China's interprovincial migration, hence the population policy at each province should be adapted accordingly so to achieve coordinated development.
2016, Vol. 31 
