Research on the High-quality Development of China’s Beef Cattle Industry from the Perspective of New Quality Productivity: Spatiotemporal Evolution, Regional Disparities, and Influencing Factors

Investigating the spatiotemporal evolution and regional disparities in the level of high-quality development of China’s beef cattle industry from the perspective of new quality productivity is of great significance for alleviating difficulties in the beef cattle sector and safeguarding national food security under the Greater Food approach. Based on the provincial panel data for China from 2014 to 2023, this study constructed an evaluation index system for the high-quality development level of the beef cattle industry from the perspective of new quality productivity, covering three dimensions: input quality, production vitality, and output efficiency. It then employed a game-theory-based combined weighting method, an integrated TOPSIS–VIKOR model, Dagum Gini coefficient decomposition, Moran’s index, spatial kernel density estimation, and a spatial Durbin model to examine the high-quality development level, spatiotemporal evolution characteristics, and influencing factors of the beef cattle industry across provinces. The results showed that during the study period, the high-quality development level of China’s beef cattle industry increased steadily, displaying an overall spatial pattern characterized by “higher in the north than in the south, and higher in the west than in the east”, with a high-level cluster emerging along the northern agro-pastoral belt from Jilin to Qinghai. The new quality productive forces of the beef cattle industry across provinces generally remained at the stage of cultivation and development and have not yet been fully transformed into the coordinated improvement of economic, ecological, and social benefits. Overall disparities in the high-quality development level of China’s beef cattle industry have declined, while the dominant source of disparity has shifted from hypervariable density to interregional differences. The spatial spillover effects of high-quality development in the beef cattle industry exhibited significant thresholds and time windows: low-level regions were prone to the risk of “low-end lock-in”, whereas high-level regions face stage-specific ceilings in their development level. Human capital endowment, the intensity of fiscal support for agriculture, and the degree of openness to the outside world exerted significant effects on the high-quality development of the beef cattle industry. In view of this, it is recommended that the policy focus for the beef cattle industry should shift toward the conversion efficiency of production factors, and that a normalized cross-regional coordination mechanism be established to extend the effective window of spatial spillover effects, thereby facilitating the high-quality development of the beef cattle industry.