Against the backdrop of regional integration, subregions with border effects have become the bottleneck in securing the sustainable development of cross-border cooperation. Based on the discussion of the subregions and subregional cooperation in China, this article put forward three theoretical hypotheses with eight typical provincial subregions in Central China as examples. Combined with relevant models, variables and data, the study tested the evolutionary mechanism of subregional cooperation. The main conclusions include: (a) internal factors contribute to better provincial subregional cooperation; (b) geographical and institutional arrangements significantly affect subregional cooperation, with the shielding effect being the dominant border effect and (c) spatial heterogeneity of high-tech industries has an inverted U-shaped effect on subregional cooperation.
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