Abstract: Balanced development of “provincial competitive sports” ( PCS) is an important aspect of sustainable sports development in China. By collecting the scores obtained by each province in the previous National Games (reflecting the strength of PCS) and its related social development indexes, the paper, using the models of ESDA and OpenGeoDa and ArcGIS10 software for data processing, analyzes the evolution of spatial agglomeration and its influence factor regarding the strength of PCS. The research shows that the strength of PCS has obvious spatial agglomeration features since the founding of PRC, the degree of which went through four processes of waning, steadily increasing, rapid declining and detouring to stability. LISA scatter diagram shows that the positive spatial correlation of PCS indicates a "high-high", "low-low" agglomeration distribution characteristics with the “low-low" agglomeration features more prominent. From the founding of the PRC to the end of the 20th Century, only the "low-low" type region remain relatively stable while big changes are witnessed in the spatial distribution of "polarization", "cold", "hot" regions. It was not until after 2005 when the four types of spatial distribution patterns became basically stable.

Key words: Competitive Sports Strength, Spatial Agglomeration, Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis