Abstract: Promoting the high-quality development of inclusive finance in rural areas so as to provide effective financial services for small and medium-sized enterprises and enhance the high-quality service of rural finance to the real economy is a key link in solving the problem of imbalanced and insufficient economic development in China. It is also necessary to achieve inclusive growth and promote social harmony and stability. By constructing an evaluation index system for rural inclusive finance and calculating the rural inclusive finance index based on data from 30 provinces (autonomous regions, municipalities directly under the central government) in China from 2008 to 2018, and employing social network analysis (SNA) and spatial Durbin model (SDM) to analyze the spatial correlation network characteristics and driving factors of rural inclusive finance development, the study finds that: (1) The number of correlation relationships and network density in the spatial correlation network of rural inclusive finance show a shift from rising to declining, and the peak is available in 2011. The overall connectivity of the correlation network is good with a “hierarchical” network structure, and all network characteristic indicators are relatively stable. (2) The degree centrality, proximity centrality, and intermediate centrality in six regions in Shanghai, Jiangsu, Beijing, Zhejiang, Shandong, and Guangdong stay at the top and continuously in the core area of the spatial correlation network with stronger control and dominance abilities, thus bearing a strong siphon effect on financial resources in other regions, resulting in the agglomeration of rural inclusive finance. (3) The level of economic development, population density, degree of government intervention, industrial structure, and banking competition are five important variables that affect the development of rural inclusive finance. From the perspective of direct effects, economic development, high population density, and moderate banking competition all promote the development of rural inclusive finance; from the perspective of indirect effects, population agglomeration, a high proportion of the primary industry, and intense banking competition all inhibit the development. In addition, increasing government fiscal expenditure on a certain area also bears a positive spillover effect on its surrounding areas.

Key words: rural finance, high quality development of inclusive finance, spatial correlation network, social network analysis