Economic structural change and freight transport demand in China

Xun Xu, Nicholas Chase and Tianduo Peng

Energy Policy, 2021, vol. 158, issue C

Abstract: China's rapidly rising freight transport demand has been one of the primary contributors to global oil consumption growth since 2000 and has remained the dominant source of domestic transport energy consumption during the same period. The objective of this paper is to investigate the main structural driving forces of China's freight transport demand during its fastest growing period (1997–2012), and to analyze its potential future scenario. The results suggest that strong growth of total final demand, an increasingly freight-intensive economic structure, and lengthening inter-industry production linkages, which is consistent with China's investment and export driven development model from 1997 to 2012, have been the main propellers of rapid freight transport demand growth during this time. Looking ahead, as the Chinese economy gradually shifts to a consumption driven model in an increasingly uncertain global economic environment, policymakers need to be aware of both unexpected demand shocks and the inherent changes of the Chinese economy while considering their implications for China's transport energy demand and China's carbon emission mitigation strategy.

Keywords: Freight transport demand; Economic structural change; Input-output; Structural decomposition analysis; Freight intensity; Dematerialization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421521004377
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:158:y:2021:i:c:s0301421521004377

DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2021.112567

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().