The Research On The Relationship Of Transport And Economic Growth In China

As an important part of the economic and social development since the reform and opening up, China’s transportation industry has been developing rapidly. National Bureau of Statistics data show that from the reform and opening up to2010, China’s high-speed rail mileage ranked second in the world, railway mileage ranks third in the world. Total mileage of China’s comprehensive transportation network during this period increased by3.4times,4.5times increase in highway mileage, railway mileage increased by1.8-fold,2.2-fold increase in the number of airports. Transportation system that can be achieved in passenger traffic increased8.7-fold,5.1-fold increase in the amount of cargo transport. Clarify the relationship between China’s transportation and economic growth will contribute to the strategic planning of the future development of traffic, and to lay the foundation for further economic growth, and is the main content of this paper.In this paper the study of the relations between traffic and economic growth in China are from different angles, using different methods and models in empirical research, and flexible combination of the dimension of time and space. The full multi-dimensional display of China’s relationships of transportation and economic growth.Chapter2summarize the theoretical basis of empirical economics and econometrics. According to previous research of relations and interactions of transportation and economic growth, a virtuous circle diagram for transportation and economic development is summarized and formed to lay a theoretical foundation to explain the complex relationship between transport and economic growth.In chapter3we first analyze the overall relationship between China’s transportation and economic growth, including from the time dimension whether the transport’s trend is consistent with the trend of China’s economic growth, the level of transport volume is consistent with the level of economic growth spatially. The results show that China’s road transport is still the mainstream of transportation, and accounted for90%passenger transport and80%of the amount of freight transport, and the proportion are quite stable; substantial increase in railway passenger and waterborne freight; lags behind the development of civil aviation lags behind, but rapidly developed; structural differences of each province and prefecture-level city traffic are large.Chapter3is the visual display of the relationships between transportation and economic growth from the time and space dimension. But how is the balanced regional development of transport in recent years, and the spatial relationship of transport and economy? This is the main content of chapter4. Chapter4uses space center of gravity analysis methods, combined with the year2001and2010China’s prefecture-level city data of traffic and economy, to investigate China’s transportation and economic spatial relationship and to reveal the balanced regional development of transport and economic growth. The results show that the center of gravity of various traffic variables are closer to the economic center of gravity during the ten years, transport and economic ties are closer. The most related transport variables are the total cargo and passengers by rail. Overall speaking, the regional development of China’s economic, highways, waterways and civil aviation are quite balanced these days. However the migration of the center of gravity of the railway, both passenger traffic and cargo migrated southwestward. This means that southwestern China’s railway traffic in this period greatly enhanced may be due to large-scale construction of large-scale development of the western region in southwest China Railway led to the increase in the railway transport supply.Earlier study in this paper did not reveal the numerical relationship between traffic and economic growth. While it is the content of chapters5and6. There are two objective in chapter5:to reveal the economic elasticity of transport (i.e. how much the traffic volume growth if economic grow by one percentage) and the transport externalities (i.e. how a region’s transport impact the economies of surrounding areas).Double logarithmic model (elastic model) and China’s provinces data and prefecture-level city data from2001to2010are used in this chapter, and passenger and cargo traffic as the main object. Different results in different scales can used to reveal the transport externalities. Since the data used in this chapter, there are many outlier in the data used in this chapter, MM robust regression method is used to weed out the damaging effects of outliers on the regression results. The results in this chapter show that the results of the elasticity is quite different, and even not in the same trends for different levels. This paper argues that the differences of elasticity shows externalities of different transport variables, for example, the total passengers, passenger and freight by rails are have positive externalities, and the total cargo, passenger and freight by roads have negative externalities.The elasticity study in chapter4are based on the speed of economic growth, which means how much the transport growth considering the speed of economic growth. While there are other measures, such as based on the economic development levels, which means how fast the transport developed for rich areas and poor areas. This problem is the convergence of the traffic, which is the main point in chapter6. Chapter6uses traffic convergence model and traffic and economic data of the prefecture-level cities in2001and2010. There is a serious spatial non-stationary for the data and models used in this chapter, so the Geographically Weighted Regression analysis method is employed. The results show that the Geographically Weighted Regression fit better than the ordinary linear regression, and can effectively solve the problem of spatial correlation. Overall speaking, both passenger traffic and cargo traffic are convergence, which means it grows faster in underdeveloped regions. However in different regions the convergence trends of transport are different. In eastern China, transports are convergence, and in the western region it is divergence.Chapter7of this paper analyzes the achievements and shortcomings of the transport development of China’s "Tenth Five-Year" and "Eleventh Five-Year" period, combined with the empirical results of this paper. Suggestions and ideas of the development of China’s transportation are promoted, including:China transport structure still need to vigorously adjust, increase the proportion of other modes of transport other than road outside, give full play to the advantages of railway passenger and waterborne freight transportation to share transport pressures, and the development of the civil aviation should still be fast; strengthen rural transportation construction, in particular to ensure rural roads construction quality and maintenance. It is an effective solution to rural residents travel difficult problem, and led the development of the rural economy; implementation of various specialized traffic policy, such as the implementation of the separation of vehicles and passenger construction, reducing the probability of traffic accidents; special transport building in economic circles and industry chain, improve the transport capacity of economic circle and the industry chain; reasonable arrangements for transportation, invest in which have positive externalities in developed regions and invest in which have negative externalities in less developed regions, strengthen the role of traffic driven economy; etc. This paper also put forward suggestions and ideas for the future study of traffic and economic growth relationships. This study analyzed from different angles of the trend, the center of gravity, elasticity, and convergence of traffic and economic growth, combing time and space dimension in the analysis, and uses state-of-the-art research methods. Its findings can be combined with the actual situation of China’s transport development, and to make recommendations to our future transportation development, have both theoretical and practical significance.