The grouping results are shown in Table 1. The first group includes
Hainan, Ningxia, Tibet, Qinghai and Tianjin. Except for Tianjin, which
is a municipality directly under the Central Government of China,
Ningxia, Qinghai and Tibet are all located in the west of China, while
Hainan is located in the southernmost part of China. From the
perspective of geographical location and historical development, the
population in this region is small, and the GDP and economic level are
at the backward level of China. The second group includes Inner
Mongolia, Jilin, Xinjiang, Heilongjiang, Chongqing, Fujian, Gansu,
Anhui, Hubei, Liaoning, Jiangxi, Guizhou, Guangxi, Yunnan, Shaanxi and
Shanxi. The second group has a large number of regions. From the
perspective of geographical location, it is mainly the northeast,
central, southwest and northwest regions of China. The third group is
Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong, which are located on the east coast and
the south coast of China. They are economically developed regions in
China and the core provinces of the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze
River Delta. The fourth group is Shandong, Henan, Sichuan, Hebei and
Hunan provinces, which are located near the central region of China. The
fifth group is Beijing and Shanghai, which are also the first tier
cities in China.
Table 2. Overview of total medical resources in Group 1.