The Economic Effect Of Connectivity Of Transport Infrastructure Of "The Belt And Road"

The connectivity of infrastructure is the critical priority of the Belt and Road Initiative(BRI),it is the important support for improvement of trade facilitation and establishment of high-standard free trade zone network.The progress of it matters much to the overall situation of the BRI.And the connectivity of transport infrastructure is the core part of the connectivity of infrastructure,which supports the realization of the BRI.The construction of transport infrastructure projects can facilitate the transportation,improve the road accessibility,reduce transport costs and transit time,thereby promoting the interregional trade and economic development of regions.Therefore,Countries along the Belt and Road and China should consider the connectivity of infrastructure as an opening and pay close attention to it so that a transport infrastructure network connecting the subregions of Asia and the Europe and Africa can be gradually established.In this contest,this paper explores the economic and trade effects of the connectivity of transport infrastructure of the BRI.Firstly,employing a regression model to investigate the effect of the improvement of rail,road and port infrastructures on the decrease of transport costs and obataining the coefficients of three catagories of transport infrastructure.Trade costs calculated by an indirect approch are used to replace the transport costs captured in the model.Secondly,Sortting out all the transport infrastructure projects under construction or under planning in six economic corridors of the BRI,and endowing these projects with different weights based on their types,lengths and whether they are updated or newly constructed.Then,combining the coeffeicients obatained before,this paper compiles indexes reflecting the reduction of transport costs on account of higher level of connectivity of transport infrastructure.Lastly,introducing the indexes into Global Trade Analysis Project(GTAP)where an international transport sector and transport costs are included.Regarding the completion of transport infrastructure projects under construction as the lower scenario and completion of all the projects as the upper scenario,then simulating the economic,trade and welfare effects of connectivity of transport infrastructure in six economic corridors of the BRI.The results show that:(1)Based on the data from 2008 to 2017,the improvement of connectivity level of rail,road and port infrastructure along the Belt and Road has a significant negative effect on the transport(trade)costs.The coefficients of rail,raod and port are0.185,0.119,0.083 respectively,which means the port has the largest impact on transport costs while the road has the least.(2)The connectivity of transport infrastructure of BRI has achieved a lot.But the the progress in each economic corridor is significantly different.For the index reflecting the reduction of transport costs on account of higher level of connectivity of transport infrastructure,when compiling it based on the projects under construction,the results of China-Mongolia-Russia,China-Central Asia-West Asia,China-Indochina Peninsula,New Asia-Europe Continental Bridge,China-Pakistan,Bangladesh-China-India-Burma Economic Corridor are 4.17,3.46,3.43,3.35,1.85 and 0.72 respectively.And when compiling the index with all the projects,the results of these six economic corridors are 6.35,5.41,5.32,3.58,3.77 and 3.55.In the two sets of indexes,the reults of Bangladesh-China-India-Burma Economic Corridor has significant difference,which is responsible for the quite high proportion of the proposed or planning projects in this economic corridor.(3)The connectivity of the transportation infrastructure promotes the growth of the GDP,import and export,and welfare of Chinese mainland and the six economic corridors.When all the transport projects are completed and the six economic corridors are fully connected with each other,China 's GDP,import and export volume,welfare will increase by 1.16%,15.41%,7.98% and 264.1 billion dollars.And these four indicators for China-Indochina Economic Corridor will increase by12.38%,17.39%,14.63% and 112.8 billion dollars respectively.Although other countries such as the United States will damage from the result of "Asia-Europe Continental Connectivity",the overall welfare of the world will still be significantly improved.(4)China-Indochina Economic Corridor will benefit most from the connectivity of transport infrastructure of BRI,and the Bangladesh-China-India-Burma EconomicCorridor will benefit significantly only when all the proposed and planned transport infrastructure projects are completed.In addition,when the six economic corridors are all connected with each other,the economic,trade,and welfare effects of China and countries along these corridors will be more significant than that in the scenario of the connectivity of a single economic corridor.