Is urban polycentricity associated with capital circulation? Insights from China’s mergers and acquisitions

Urban planning has increasingly embraced polycentrism to mitigate agglomeration diseconomies and strengthen complementarities among cities, yet its relationship with national capital markets remains underexplored. This study addresses that gap by examining three polycentric characteristics of 14 urban agglomerations in China—spatial dispersion, hierarchical differentiation, and local clustering of urban centers—and their associations with agglomeration-level performance in national M&A capital flows. The results show that greater spatial dispersion is significantly negatively associated with an agglomeration’s in-degree centrality in the inter-urban M&A network. By contrast, stronger hierarchical differentiation is positively associated with inward M&A connectivity, while local clustering is also positively related to inward connectivity, though only at the 10% level. Further analysis indicates that hierarchical differentiation is not significantly associated with outward M&A connectivity, either within or between agglomerations. The study contributes theoretically by clarifying how urban polycentricity relates to corporate M&A activity and capital-flow positioning. Empirically, it suggests that urban agglomerations in China may benefit from development patterns that are balanced in spatial structure yet hierarchically differentiated in urban functions, particularly in enhancing their capacity to attract, organize, and manage investment flows within the national capital network.