Abstract: Based on the analysis of the connotation of the green development index in the “2016 Annual Review of the Evaluation Result of the Ecological Civilization Construction” issued by the National Bureau of Statistics and other ministries, this paper applies the exploratory spatial data analysis method to conduct an exploratory analysis of the spatial distribution law, correlation model and regional development differences of China’s green development index and its secondary index. The findings indicate that China’s green development index and the resource utilization index in its secondary index are basically presenting a random distribution in space, and the regional development characteristics of strong east and weak west are not significant. Other remaining five secondary indexes have significant spatial positive auto-correlation, the agglomeration tendency of them is obvious, which evolves toward the“high-high”and“low-low”binary spatial distribution. The causes of the differences in the green development in each region are different. This proves that the concept of regional development must shift from a single economic development concept to a coordinated development concept between resources, environment and economy.

Key words: green development index; exploratory spatial data analysis method; spatial correlation; regional differences