Why Do China’s Resource-Based Cities Diverge in Economic Growth? Heterogeneity, the Conditional Resource Curse, and Stage-Specific Sustainable Paths

The sustainable development of resource-based cities (RBCs) has been a focal point for both governmental policies and academic research. Recent evidence reveals a striking divergence in growth across Chinese RBCs, raising a core question: Why do some RBCs experience prolonged decline while others sustain long-term growth? This study aims to determine whether, and under what conditions, resource dependence acts as a curse rather than a blessing and to derive stage-specific sustainable development pathways. On the basis of a panel dataset of 115 prefecture-level RBCs in China covering 2000–2020, we combine two-way fixed effects estimation with an XGBoost–SHAP analytical framework to explore the drivers of growth divergence. Three key findings emerge. First, the resource curse is conditional. Resource dependence has an inverted U-shaped effect on economic growth, and this effect differs systematically across growing, mature, declining, and regenerative cities. Second, total factor productivity is the primary predictor of growth, accounting for 55.2% of the total explanatory power, whereas the digital economy, financial development, manufacturing scale, geographic location, and resource dependence each contribute only 5–8.4%. Third, the economic growth of resource-based cities is jointly shaped by the nonlinear moderating effects of multiple factors. When the marginal contribution of the digital economy changes from positive to negative beyond a critical threshold, financial development exhibits an inverted U-shaped pattern, and manufacturing scale maintains an approximately linear positive effect. These findings provide empirical guidance for designing stage specific, differentiated sustainable development strategies.