This paper examines how the economies of old industrial cities in Northeast China respond to the on-going COVID-19 pandemic crisis. The notion of resistance in regional economic resilience is used to explore what impact factors shape the response to the early stage of the crisis. The analysis reveals significant differences in terms of regional economic impact between COVID-19 and the 2008 financial crisis. We find that large cities are more vulnerable and exposed to the pandemic at its early stage, state agency plays a crucial role in shaping the economic resistance in most cities. Going beyond the existing 2008 financial crisis-induced account on regional economic resilience, this paper argues that regional resistance amid COVID-19 is not merely shaped by economic structural factors but also influenced by state agency in terms of economic restriction and restoration measures. The study suggests that the nature of COVID-19 as a particular context of crisis itself needs to be taken seriously when exploring the determinants and outcomes of regional economic resilience.

Regional economic resilience provides a new perspective for explaining regional differences in response to recession shocks. This paper analyzed the regional economic resilience of Liaoning Province in China in terms of its resistance and recoverability dimensions from 1990 to 2015 and explored the determinants of regional economic resilience by constructing a spatial econometric model using panel data. There are three main findings. First, the level of regional economic resilience in Liaoning was low and its urban economy was more vulnerable to external shocks than that of the whole nation. Second, we found that factors such as the local governance arrangement, the regional innovation ability, and the level of economic diversification have significant positive effects on regional economic resilience. Factors such as the proportion of secondary industry and the GDP negatively affect regional economic resilience. Third, regional economic resilience demonstrates a spatial autocorrelation, and the improvement of economic resilience in the surrounding areas will lead to the decline of regional economic resilience.

The recession and revitalization of old industrial cities concerns urban industrial evolution and its characteristics. Based on the theory of evolutionary resilience, we developed an analytical framework for the industrial structure evolution of old industrial cities, and applied the framework to a case study in Shenyang. The following conclusions are drawn. First, since 1978, Shenyang's industrial growth capacity has shown fluctuation between 'contraction-expansion'. As the secondary industry has a much stronger expansionary and contractionary capacity for growth, this results in lacking stability leading to industrial structure transformation. Second, since 1999, the orientation towards a high-end manufacturing industry in Shenyang has weakened, and the evolution of the new and old growth path is characterized by low-end orientation. Third, since 2007, Shenyang's industrial innovation output capacity has dropped sharply which has been significantly affected by scientific and technological personnel and enterprise-owed science and technology institutions and to a less extent by R&D expenditure. We applied the resilience theory to study the industrial evolution of an old industrial city, explored new study perspectives on industrial evolution and verified the applicability of the resilience theory. This paper provides a scientific reference for understanding the recent deceleration in economic growth in the Northeast old industrial base, and for exploring new paths toward revitalization.