推进高质量发展已成为新时代全面建设社会主义现代化国家的首要任务。自2017年10月党的十九大报告提出我国经济发展已由高速增长转向高质量发展阶段以来，高质量发展的理论思想、概念内涵不断丰富完善，实践经验不断拓展积累。高质量发展以满足人民美好生活需要为目标，其重要载体是具体的空间区域。几十年来，我国区域发展质量整体明显提升，经济、社会、文化等各方面建设成绩显著。但与此同时，省级单元间发展质量的明显差距及变化趋势差异不容忽视，部分省级单元发展的内生潜力尚未充分释放。从高质量发展要求出发，区域发展质量的提升涉及多维发展目标的和谐统一，其协调状况直接影响区域高质量发展的动态过程及提升能力，并且存在复杂的区域分异。在量化分析中，区域发展目标间的协调状况可由评价发展质量的具体指标或指标组的提升状况之间的耦合关系来直观反映，根据提升状况的一致或背离特征可进一步分为协同、权衡两种关系，并识别出具体的因果作用方向。因此，针对区域发展质量提升目标，开展区域发展质量指标（组）间耦合关系及其区域分异分析，对于提升管理政策的实际效益、释放区域发展的内生潜力、推动区域发展质量的整体提升具有重要意义。

基于此，本研究关联中国省级区域发展质量的动态演变特征及其内在耦合机制差异，从区域发展质量指标（组）间耦合关系及其对区域高质量发展进展的影响出发，提供差异化调控策略建议，具体包括三部分内容。首先，提出并应用了一种能体现政府决策者意愿及整体战略变化的新型综合指数算法；选择2000—2019年为研究时段，评估并分析了中国省级区域发展质量的动态演变，识别了典型演化梯队及其省级单元组成。之后，以中国省级区域高质量发展评价体系中的17个具体目标作为17个指标组，提出了一种高效的定性、定量结合的指标组间相互作用关系分析新方法，并在此基础上构建了省级尺度的指标组间相互作用关系网络，从网络视角解析并对比了不同梯队省级单元指标组间相互作用关系的差异；在网络分析中，创新性地考虑了指标组间相互作用的级联效应，量化并分析了各指标组进展对其他指标组进展的深层次影响作用。此外，本文提出了考虑、最大化指标组间相互作用收益的多准则区域发展调控策略分析模型，在省级尺度上对17个区域高质量发展目标（即指标组）的优先级策略进行分析，并结合省级尺度指标组间相互作用关系特征分析结果，针对各梯队省级单元分别提出区域高质量发展策略。主要结论如下：

（1）2000—2019年间各省级单元的整体发展质量明显上升，其中前期上升趋势平稳，后期随着整体战略变化下维度间相对重要性的调整、尤其是“创新驱动”维度重要性的上升而波动上升。从空间格局上看，省级单元整体发展质量存在“东部全面持续领跑、中西部稳步跟进、且涌现出新兴优势区”的演化特征。根据省级单元整体发展质量的演化特征，30个省级单元可被分为四大发展梯队，依次为“持续领跑型”省级单元（包括北京、上海）、“领先提升型”省级单元（包括浙江、广东等5个东部沿海省级单元）、“稳步提升型”省级单元（包括吉林、河南等14个省级单元，中部地区省级单元占主体）和“落后迟缓型”省级单元（包括新疆、青海等9个省级单元，西部地区省级单元占主体）。其中，在研究阶段内，“持续领跑型”和“领先提升型”省级单元的综合发展质量在全国始终处于最高和较高的领先水平，发展势头强劲。“稳步提升型”和“落后迟缓型”省级单元在研究阶段内虽也取得明显进展，但整体发展质量持续落后、且提升相对迟缓，与前两梯队省级单元进一步拉大差距。

（2）各省级单元内指标组（具体为17个区域高质量发展目标）间普遍存在广泛耦合关系，且耦合关系主要表现为协同关系，在数量、强度上均普遍存在主导性优势。其中，关注经济增长的“经济水平”指标组在各省级单元普遍具有最为广泛和最强的协同关系，位于区域高质量发展系统的核心；其次是关注区域发展的协调状况、经济绿色程度及产业结构的“区域协调”“绿色程度”和“经济结构”指标组。但上述指标组在网络中的核心程度随省级区域发展质量的提升特征均呈现倒“U”分布，在发展水平低、发展落后缓慢的“落后迟缓型”省级单元和发展水平高、协调性基础较好的“持续领跑型”省级单元相对较低。在省级单元网络中广泛存在以“经济水平”“结构优化”“创新投入”“创新产出”和“对外贸易”为核心的一系列指标组组合，组合内部协同关系紧密。

（3）指标组间直接相互作用分析表明，从各省级单元的整体状况来看，经济水平的提升与经济结构的优化对区域高质量发展的其他方面进展普遍存在最为广泛的协同作用。但在当前阶段，经济结构优化的带动作用强度及系统整体的耦合紧密程度随省级区域发展综合质量的提升存在倒“U”型特征，核心原因是随着区域发展综合质量的提升，以非农产业占比升高为特征的经济结构的合理化发展对区域高质量发展其他方面所能起到的带动作用存在上限、而以科技创新体系建设为基础的新质生产力发展尚处梯度上升阶段，表现出的提升作用相对有限。科技创新发展也对推动区域发展质量的持续提升普遍发挥了重要作用，在区域高质量发展的领先城市和地区突出表现为实际创新成果的产出对经济水平和经济绿色程度提升的高水平推动作用，而在落后地区则凸显为创新成果产出对提升区域协调发展水平的高强度作用和创新建设投入对文化事业蓬勃发展的显著溢出效应。上述规律具体表现为“经济水平”“结构优化”“创新投入”和“创新产出”指标组在各省级单元网络中突出的影响作用及具体强度差异。考虑相互作用的级联效应时，除了上述指标组，“生态保护”和“法治安全”的系统性重要性在各省级单元普遍得到凸显，对系统存在广泛、深远正向影响。

（4）多准则优先级策略分析模型应用结果显示，所有省级单元区域高质量发展的整体调控压力均较小，仅有不超过40%的指标组亟待紧急措施推进、或遏制其权衡作用。大多数指标组在指标组间相互作用影响下将出现额外的进展，各省级单元内将被相互作用阻碍、因而需加强资源倾斜的指标组均不超过4个。但“粮食安全”“生态保护”和“教育事业”广泛面临较高的优先级压力。对应地，需广泛重视并尽快处理好“粮食安全”与其他指标组间的权衡关系、改善其受到来自区域高质量发展其他方面的“挤兑”作用、推动其整体水平提升；应增加教育投入，重视社会经济快速发展下高素质人才需求增加、高等教育持续扩招引起的师资资源不足及教育质量下滑风险；处理好生态环境保护同经济水平提升、对外贸易发展之间的权衡关系，尤其在落后梯队省级单元。

Promoting high-quality development has become the primary task in the new era of comprehensively building a socialist modernized country. Since the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in October 2017, it has been explicitly stated in the congress report that our country's economic development has shifted from a stage of high-speed growth to a stage of high-quality development. The theoretical ideas and conceptual connotations of high-quality development consistently enrich and improve along with the expansion and the accumulation of related practical experiences. High-quality development aims to satisfy people's aspirations for a better life, and its crucial carrier is specific spatial regions. Over the past decades, the overall level of regional development quality in China has significantly improved, with notable achievements in various aspects, such as economy, society, and culture. However, the noticeable disparities in the development quality among provinces and the evolving trends cannot be ignored, and the intrinsic potential of development in some provinces has not been fully unleashed yet. From the requirements of high-quality development, the improvement of regional development quality involves the coordination of multi-dimensional development goals. Their coupling relationships directly impact the dynamic process and enhancement capabilities of regional high-quality development. In quantitative analysis, the coordination status among regional development goals can be intuitively reflected by the coupling relationship between the improvement status of specific indicators or indicator groups that assess regional development quality. Based on the consistency or deviation characteristics of the changing status, these coupling relationships can be further divided into two types: synergies and trade-offs, and their specific causal directions can be further identified as well. Therefore, for the goal of regional high-quality development, analyzing the coupling relationships between regional development quality indicators (groups) and their regional differentiations is of significant importance, which can contribute to improving the practical effects of management policies, unleashing the endogenous potential of regional development, and promoting the overall enhancement of regional development quality.

Based on this, this study examines the dynamic evolution characteristics of China's provincial development quality and the differences in its inherent coupling mechanisms. From the coupling relationships between regional development quality indicators (and groups) and their impacts on the progress of regional high-quality development, this study provides differentiated regulatory strategy recommendations. Specifically, this study comprises three main parts. First, a novel composite index algorithm that reflects the intentions of government decision-makers and changes in the overall strategy is proposed and applied, to evaluate the dynamic evolution characteristics of China's provincial development quality and identify typical evolutionary echelons during 2000-2019. Then, taking 17 specific goals within the evaluation system for regional high-quality development at the provincial level as indicator groups, an efficient qualitative-quantitative combined method of analyzing interactions is proposed and applied to establish provincial interaction networks among indicator groups. This study analyzes and compares the differences among different echelons of provinces in interaction relationships among development quality indicator groups from a network perspective, considering the cascading effects of interactions to quantify system-level impacts of the progress of each indicator group on the progress of other indicator groups in the network. What is more, a multi-criteria regional development priority strategy analytical model is proposed, which considers and maximizes the benefits of mutual interactions. With this model, this study analyzes priority strategies for the 17 regional high-quality development goals (as 17 indicator groups) at the provincial level. Combining results of the priority analytical model and inter-indicator group interaction relationships at the provincial level, this study summarizes and proposes regional high-quality development strategy recommendations for provinces in different echelons. The main conclusions of this study are as follows:

(1) From 2000 to 2019, the overall development quality in each province has significantly increased. Initially, the upward trend of the development quality was steady, with fluctuations later occurring because of adjustments in the relative importance of dimensions under changes in the national-level overall strategies, especially for the increased importance of the "innovation-driven" dimension. From a spatial perspective, the overall development quality of provinces exhibits an evolutionary characteristic of "comprehensive sustained leadership in the eastern region, steady follow-up in the central and western regions with the emergence of new advantageous areas". Based on the evolution characteristics of provincial overall development quality, 30 provincial level units can be divided into four development echelons: "sustained leadership" units (comprising Beijing and Shanghai), "leading improvement" units (comprising 5 eastern coastal units such as Zhejiang and Guangdong), "steady improvement" units (comprising 14 units such as Anhui and Henan, with units in the central region as the main component), and "lagging behind" provinces (comprising 9 units such as Xinjiang and Qinghai, with units in the western region as the main component). "Sustained leadership" and "leading improvement" units both show consistently superior development quality throughout the research period with strong momentum. "Steady improvement" and "lagging behind" units have also made significant progress during the research period, but their overall development quality lags behind with relatively slow progress, gradually widening the gap with the first two echelons.

(2) There is generally a wide range of coupling relationships among indicator groups (17 regional high-quality development goals) within each province. These coupling relationships are mainly manifested as synergistic relationships, with dominant advantages in terms of quantity and intensity. The indicator group focusing on economic growth called "economic level" generally has the most extensive and strongest synergistic relationships in provinces, occupying a central position within the regional high-quality development system, followed by indicator groups of "regional coordination", "green degree", and "structural optimization" concerning regional development coordination, economic environmental sustainability, and industrial structure, respectively. The core degree of the above indicator groups in the network exhibits an inverted "U"-shaped distribution with the improvement of provincial development quality, which is relatively lower in the "lagging behind" provincial units with low development levels and in the "sustained leadership" units with high levels of development and basic coordination. There widely exist a series of combinations of indicator groups with "economic level", "structural optimization", "innovation input", "innovation output", and "foreign trade" as cores in the provincial level networks, with close synergistic relationships within each combination.

(3) The direct interaction among indicator groups reflects the widespread synergy effects from both the improvement of economic level and the optimization of economic structure on the progress of regional high-quality development in various aspects. At the current stage, the intensity of the driving effect of economic structure optimization and the overall coupling degree of the system exhibits an inverted "U"-shaped characteristic with the improvement of the quality of provincial-level regional development. The core reason is that as the comprehensive quality of regional development improves, the driving effect of the rationalization of the economic structure characterized by the increase in the proportion of non-agricultural industries on the other aspects of regional high-quality development has an upper limit, while the development of new quality productivity based on the construction of a technological innovation system is still in the stage of gradient ascent with limited promoting effects. The development of science and technology has played an important role universally to promote the continuous improvement of the level of regional high-quality development; in leading cities and provinces of high-quality regional development, it is highlighted by the high-level driving effect of actual innovation outputs on the improvement of economic level and environmental friendliness, while in backward areas, it is highlighted by the high-intensity effect of the innovation outputs on enhancing the level of regional coordinated development and the significant spillover effect of investment in innovation construction on the vigorous development of cultural undertakings. The above-mentioned laws are specifically manifested in the prominent influencs and specific intensity differentiations of "economic level", "structural optimization", "innovation input", and "innovation output" in the network of each provincial-level unit. When considering the cascading effects of interactions, in addition to the above indicator groups, the systemic importance of "ecological protection" and "legal security" is highlighted, showing extensive and far-reaching positive effects on the system.

(4) Application results of the multi-criteria priority strategy analytical model show that the overall regulatory pressure for regional high-quality development in all provincial-level units is relatively low, with only less than 40% of the indicator groups requiring urgent measures to promote or tackle their trade-off effects. Most indicator groups can achieve additional progress under the influence of interactions among indicator groups, and the indicator groups needing higher resource allocation hindered by interactions do not exceed four in any province. However, indicator groups of "food security", "ecological protection", and "education" widely needs high-priorities. Accordingly, there is a wide need to pay attention to and promptly tackle the trade-offs between "food security" with other indicator groups, weaken its "crowding-out" effects from other aspects of regional high-quality development, and promote its overall improvement. It is also universally needed to increase investment in education, emphasizing the shortage of teaching resources and the risk of declining education quality caused by the rapid expansion of higher education under the demand of rapid socio-economic development. Also, it is needed to address the trade-offs between ecological environmental protection with the improvement of economic level and foreign trade development, especially in lagging echelon provinces.