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This is an empirical paper that measures and interprets changes in intercity relations at the global scale in the period [2000][2001][2002][2003][2004][2005][2006][2007][2008]. We draw on the network model devised by the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) research group to measure global connectivities for 307 cities across the world in 2000 and 2008. The measurements for both years are adjusted so that a coherent set of services/cities is used. A range of statistical techniques is used to explore these changes at the city level and the regional scale. The most notable changes are (i) the general rise of connectivity in the world city network, (ii) the loss of global connectivity of US and Sub-Saharan African cities (Los Angeles, San Francisco and Miami in particular), and (iii) the gain in global connectivity of South Asian, Chinese and Eastern European cities (Shanghai, Beijing and Moscow in particular).

We analyse the geographies of urban networks created by leading producer services (PS) firms in China. Because of the national regulation of the Chinese state-led economy and the location strategies of global advanced producer services (APS) firms, the geography of global APS in China as examined by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC) cannot be studied as a subnetwork of GaWC's global network, but needs an empirical study based on a wide range of leading PS in the Chinese market. We explore the spatial differentiation in the connectivity of Chinese cities based on the location strategies of 323 APS firms in 287 Chinese cities. Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen emerge as the primary nodes. The spatial distribution of banking, securities, and insurance services networks appears to be more even than those of non-financial PS firms. Regional disparity exists in terms of polycentric urban development in coastal China, as well as in the centralisation model in central and western areas. We suggest that owing to the continued tight regulation of China's state-led economy and the nature of the location strategies of 'globalised' PS firms, the urban networks created by Chinese PS firms are not only an extension of urban networks at a global scale but also an embodiment of economic activities at other scales.

This is an empirical paper that measures and interprets the position of Chinese cities in the world city network in 2010. Building on a specification of the world city network as an ′interlocking network′ in which business services firms play the crucial role in city network formation, information is gathered about the presence of global service firms in cities. This information is converted into data to provide the ′service value′ of a city for a firm′s provision of corporate services in a 526 (cities) × 175 (firms) matrix. These data are then used as the input to the interlocking network model in order to measure cities′ connectivity and its predominant geographical orientation. Here we focus on the position of some key Chinese cities in this regard, and discuss and interpret results in the context of the urban dimensions of the ′opening up′ of the Chinese economy.

and which operates electronically through its website: www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc. It has become a leading academic think tank on cities in globalization through harnessing researchers from across the world: in the research reported here GaWC researchers from Loughborough and Ghent Universities have collaborated with the Global Urban Competitiveness Project at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in Beijing.