Economic Spatial Structure in China: Evidence from Railway Transport Network

Fangqu Niu and Fang Wang
Additional contact information
Fangqu Niu: Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Fang Wang: School of Public Management, Inner Mongolia University, Hohhot 010020, China

Land, 2022, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-17

Abstract: This study analyzes the structure of China’s overall railway transport network and its sub-networks of conventional railway and high-speed railway, with the aim to understand the country’s economic spatial structure that is reflected by or underlines the railway transport network. First, the results indicate that compared with developed cities, backward cities not only have fewer train services but also lack a symmetrical transport plan; backward cities tend to connect with developed cities rather than within themselves. Second, the national-level urban hierarchy was established using the proposed algorithm, which helped reveal the economic geography of three economic plates in China. Third, the law of the primate city is not prominent in a large country such as China, which is undergoing regional restructuring with the economic center of gravity shifting to the coastal area while also moving south.

Keywords: railway; CR; HSR; urban hierarchy; economic center of gravity; city rank-size (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/1/61/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/1/61/ (text/html)

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:gam:jlands:v:11:y:2022:i:1:p:61-:d:716265

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().