High-speed Railway Development And The Economic Growth Convergence Of Cities In China

Promoting coordinated regional economic development is one of the most important goal of economic development in China. The improvement of traffic conditions reduces the transport costs, speeds up the flow of production factors, and has impact on the agglomeration and dispersion of economic activities. Among all the transportation tools, high-speed railway has become the most active transportation factor impacting the economic growth of cities, with its fast development. By the end of the year 2013, China has already built up the world’s second largest rail network as well as the world’s largest high-speed rail network. In this circumstances, cities are confronted with the new opportunities and challenges in economic development, which is brought by the railway transport development. Whether the traffic condition improvement promote the convergence of regional economic growth, or expand regional economic disparities, remains a question.This paper analysis how the high-speed railway development effects the convergence of regional economic growth from the theoretical perspective. According to the "core- periphery" theory from Friedman, the high-speed railway development decrease transportation costs by altering the cities’ accessibility, and thus affect the spatial distribution of economic activities. The paper argues that accessibility is the “intermediary index” that measure the impact of high-speed rail development on regional economic growth. High-speed railway development will affect the factor mobility as well as the location choices of enterprises and residents by improving the cities’ accessibility.Because of the short development history of high-speed railway in China, the paper analyses the impact of the accessibility changing on the cities’ economic growth convergence, which is brought by six increase in speed of railway during 1997 to 2011. And we take this analysis as a fact of experience to support the further study later in this paper. Specifically, the paper studies how the railway development affect the convergence of economic growth of cities along railway among different spatial levels, namely nation, region and city, by the method of conditional β convergence model. The empirical results show that the railway development has weak negative effect on the β convergence of economic growth of cities along railway in whole nation. From the perspective of region, the railway transportation development accelerates the β convergence speed of economic growth of cities along railway in northeast region, but slows down the β convergence speed of economic growth of cities along railway in east and west regions, and have uncertain effect on the β convergence of those in central region. From the perspective of city group, the railway transportation development has positive effect on the β convergence of economic growth of the fourth-tier, fifth-and-sixth-tier cities along railway, but has negative effect on theβconvergence of economic growth of the first-and-second-tier cities along railway, and have uncertain effect on theβconvergence of the third-tier cities. Lastly, from the perspective of different traffic conditions, the railway transportation development have positive effect on the β convergence of economic growth of the cities along both speed-up and non-speed-up railway lines, and this effect is stronger on the cities along speed-up railway lines.According to the "Long-term Railway Network Plan(Revised in 2008)", the paper try to predict the impact of high-speed railway development on the convergence of economic growth of cities along railway during 2011 to 2020, and then compare this impact to the impact brought by the railway transportation development during 1997-2011. The result shows that the high-speed railway development slows down the β convergence speed of economic growth of cities along the railway in whole nation for 10.71%, and this negative effect is more severe than the impact brought by the railway transportation development, and the negative impact of high-speed railway on the β convergence is stronger in the early stage of high-speed railway development than the time the high-speed network completed. From the perspective of region, the high-speed railway development has negative effect on the β convergence speed of economic growth of cities along the railway in east region, and the β convergence speed falls down for 0.3%, but this negative effect is weaker than the effect brought by the railway transportation development. In addition, this negative will be weaker by the time the high-speed railway network completed. From the perspective of city group, the high-speed railway development slows down the β convergence speed of economic growth of first-and-second-tier cities along the railway for 6.9%, and this negative effect is stronger than the impact brought by the railway transportation development, and the negative impact of high-speed railway on the β convergence will be severer by the time the high-speed network completed. At last, from the perspective of different traffic conditions, the high-speed railway development slows down the βconvergence speed of economic growth of cities along the speed-up railway for 6.71%, and negative effect of high-speed railway on the β convergence will be severer by the time the high-speed network completed as well. However, the high-speed railway development has uncertain impact on the β convergence of economic growth of cities along railway in the rest regions and city groups.Therefore, the impact of railway transportation development on the convergence of economic growth of cities along railway is different due to the region and period of time. In the future project of high-speed rail development, the government should try to control the possible adverse effect on the economic growth convergence, which is brought by the high-speed railway development. And the government should pay attention to the different impact on the economic growth convergence of cities along railway between the early development of high-speed railway and the time that the network is completed. At last, they should also take appropriate measures to alleviate the negative impact on the economic growth convergence, strengthen the positive impact of high-speed railway development.