High Speed Railway Development And The Economic Integration Among Regions Along The Lines

Regional economic integration is an important trend of Chinese regional economicdevelopment. The completion and operation of high-speed rail network is an important factoraffecting the development of our regional economic integration. By improving the transportationaccessibility, reducing travel time and transportation costs, High-speed rails have weakened thebarriers to factor mobility between regions, enhanced the regional advantages along the regionwhere high-speed rails reach, which promote economic activities to gather together along theroutes, strengthen economic inter-cooperation between areas. These will change the regionaleconomic pattern along the routes.Firstly, we study the basic way of the influence on regional economic development fromhigh-speed rails. In general, the high-speed rails affect regional economic development throughimproving accessibility of transportation network. On the one hand, the high-speed rail canreduce travel time and costs, which makes the traffic of the region along high-speed railsincreased, reduces production and transaction costs, therefore they change the geographicaladvantages of the regions; On the other hand, high-speed rails will promote the development ofregional transportation network, accelerate factor mobility and optimization of the labor marketand increase the migration space of industries or enterprises, which will cause the adjustment ofregional economic development pattern along the high speed rail.Secondly, we analyze systematically how high-speed rails affect the regional economicintegration from the aspects of inter-regional cooperation in trade, industrial development andregional economic cooperation. The results showed that: first, High Speed Rail can strengtheninter-regional trade, but this effect has different performance in different region. AS to the "fourvertical and four horizontal " high-speed rail lines, the biggest changes of exports is on Xu-Lanline, the minimal on Beijing-Shanghai line. For the four regions of our country, the magnitude ofchanges of total exports in2011and2020is Western Area> Central Area> Northeast Area>East Area. Second, high-speed rail strengthen the trend of industry cluster along the routes.However, There are some differences between the city in different levels along the line. Underthe high-speed’s rail influence, the center city, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou,Shenzhen and so on, become the research and development, management, innovation and servicecenter. The central region, such as the capital city of Zhengzhou, Wuhan, Changsha and so on, should form the rational division with those coastal cities. The western regions and other areasalong the line should actively carry cooperate with second-tier cities and avoid the adverseeffects caused by high-speed rail. Third, the regional tourism cooperation in the region alonghigh-speed rails has become the pilot of the regional economic cooperation.Finally, on the basis of the new economic geography theory, we use market potential impactas the substitution variable of the effect of high-speed rails. And we use the drag coefficient ofmarket potential in the market potential model of the wage equation. From the model, we gotboundary effects and inspect the impact of high-speed rails on the regional economic integrationalong the area of high-speed rails. The conclusions are as the following: First, in general, theboundary effect of2010decreased by144%than1997, indicating that the degree of regionaleconomic integration deepens. Second, as to the "four vertical and four horizontal" high-speedrail lines, the boundary effect in2020were lower than in1997, indicating an increase of theextent of regional economic integration along high-speed rails. Among them, the border effect ofthe area along Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway is the minimum, and the border effect of thearea along Xu-Lan high-speed railway is the highest. However, in2020the border effect of thearea along Xu-Lan high-speed railway decreased up to64.67%, indicating that high-speed railseffect on promoting regional economic integration of undeveloped area along the route issignificant. Third, for the different regions, compared with1997, the descend of the border effectin2020showing a decline in the West> Central> East, suggesting that as to the high-speed rails’role in promoting economic integration of the areas along the route, it is the biggest in the west,the second in the central and the minimum in the east.The conclusions indicate that high-speed rail is an important factor affecting Chineseregional economic integration. High-speed rails’ construction and operation has brought newopportunities to regional economic integration along the routes. Therefore, our country andregions along high-speed rails should pay more attention on high-speed rails and rely onhigh-speed rails, therefore, actively promote regional economic integration, from multipleaspects such as politics and planning.