Abstract: Regional imbalance is one of the problems in China’s economic development，and also a focus of researches at home and abroad. This paper，by testing the spatial autocorrelation among 29 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities ) from 1953 to 2010 in China with the Moran’s I index，discusses the variation of spatial autocorrelation，development path of regional economic pattern and the policy factors which lead to the differences of regional economic development. The results show that the regional autocorrelation degree has increased gradually，and that the impact of spatial factor on regional economic development has become increasingly apparent. National economic policy in different periods is an important reason for the change of regional economic pattern and economic development differences. Due to different policies，economic center has moved from the northeast to inland and then to the eastern region，and spatial economic distribution has also undergone a transformation from homogeneous space to heterogeneous one. On the whole，there exhibits a strong polarized trend of “highhigh”，“lowlow” gathering with a striking market segmentation.

Key words: regional economic pattern in China, regional economic differences, spatial autocorrelation, spatial dynamic evolution, Moran’s I index