Study On The Impact Of High Speed Railway On Economic Development

Since 2007,China has embarked on a high-speed rail construction.By 2019,the operating mileage of high-speed rail has exceeded 35,000 kilometers,covering more than 200 cities.More than5,000 pairs of trains run every day,and the construction of “eight vertical and eight horizontal” highspeed rail network is in full swing.The development of high-speed railway has changed the history of China's transportation,accelerated the flow of production factors and the dissemination of information and knowledge,and exerted a growing influence on the urban economic development.Based on the new economic geography theory,urban economy theory and international trade theory,this paper studies the urban economic development effect of high-speed railway from the perspective of high-speed rail passenger flow and network effect,in order to provide policy suggestions for promoting high-quality urban development by grasping the internal relationship between high-speed railway and urban economic development.First,on the basis of a large number of high-speed railway data,this paper analyzes the development history,spatial pattern and network structure of high-speed railway.The research shows that since 2003,China's high-speed railway construction has undergone four stages: starting construction,rapid development,high-speed development and prosperous development.The scale of daily high-speed rail service is huge,and the characteristics of bus,network and city integration are obvious.The density and centrality of the high-speed railway network in China have been continuously increasing,and the centrality of priority has become obvious,forming a four-level highspeed railway connection network,and presenting a trend of multi-center and balanced development.Second,based on the calibrated data of night light intensity in 271 cities from 2007 to 2016,the effect of high-speed rail on urban economic growth was estimated using the “shortest path-minimum cost” high-speed rail network as an instrumental variable.It is found that the development of highspeed railway has significantly promoted the growth of urban economy,but the growth effect is restricted by urban geographical location,population size,location of high-speed railway stations,grade of high-speed railway lines and other factors.The urban economic growth effect of high-speed rail has a significant feature of spatial overflow,and the “2-hour high-speed rail circle” and the “1-hour high-speed rail circle” have been formed respectively in national central cities and regional central cities.Third,this paper explores three mechanisms by which high-speed railway development affects urban economic growth from the perspectives of economic agglomeration effect,technological progress effect and export trade effect.The research results show that:(1)The development of highspeed railway has an impact on enterprise decision-making by shortening the spatial distance and reducing the search time,etc.,and promotes the continuous clustering of enterprises toward the "pole" cities with prominent geographical advantages,which makes the manufacturing industry and service industry form spatial clustering in the cities along the way and improves the collaborative clustering level between the urban manufacturing industry and service industry.(2)The development of highspeed railway has promoted both innovation level and innovation quality of manufacturing enterprises through innovation factor agglomeration and knowledge and information dissemination.In particular,it has more obvious influence on enterprises in technology-intensive industries with high research and development intensity and enterprises with non-state ownership.The higher the speed is and the closer the high-speed railway station is to the urban center,the more significant the development of high-speed railway will be in promoting innovation.The development of high-speed railways has fully unleashed the innovation capabilities of the Yangtze River Delta,The Pearl River Delta and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region,increased the accumulation of innovation resources in the central and western regions,and narrowed the gap in innovation capabilities between regions.(3)The development of high-speed railway promotes the face-to-face interaction cost of traders,helps to improve the matching efficiency of middlemen and the productivity of enterprises,thus promoting the export trade of enterprises.The influence degree varies significantly with the different characteristics of cities,high-speed railway and enterprises.Finally,based on the conclusion of this study,combining with the trend of China's urban economic development,in accordance with the requirements for high-quality economic development,focusing on improving the internal driving force for urban economic growth and the innovation capacity of the manufacturing sector,this paper puts forward some policy suggestions,such as accelerating the development of the national high-speed railway network,coordinating the timing and the train number arrangement of high-speed railway construction,constructing the knowledge innovation cluster area oriented by the knowledge overflow of high-speed railway,and building the“national high-speed railway innovation corridor”.