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High speed rail and China’s new economic geography: Impact assessment from the regional science perspective

The link between lack of infrastructure and regional economic disparity is an increasing relevant area of research in the economics of geography. This book adopts a new economics of geography perspective to contribute to the lively debate on governments’ investments in new infrastructure to improve connections and transportation between regions and cities, and regional economic growth. The book sheds a new light on key issues that have been receiving increasing attention in recent years from scholars studying similar infrastructure developments in Europe and the United States. While it supports evidence on the effect of high-speed rail (HSR) on domestic air transportation, it also extends our knowledge of HSR and the new economic geography of countries. Existing studies analyse HSR in European countries such as Spain and Italy, and the United States; this book provides an accurate analysis of the effect of HSR on China’s new economic geography and environment. The development of HSR in China was unique in terms of the pace of technological innovation and new technology development not seen in other countries. The authors use different sources of data to develop a large and rich data set. These rich data make the analysis interesting and empirically accurate. The book is organized in three parts. The four chapters in Part 1 present evidence on the impact of HSR on land values and real estate. The results of the spatial econometric regression analysis show that the development of HSR is associated with an increase in land values (chapter 2). Chapter 3 investigates the significant impacts of HSR on urban expansion in the case of Beijing–Shanghai passenger-dedicated lines. Chapters 4 and 5 focus on the link between rail infrastructure and housing impact. The two chapters in Part 2 investigate an important research area, that is, the impact of HSR on tourism (chapter 6); and the relation between two transportation systems: HSR and domestic air transportation (chapter 7), which is a crucial area for policy intervention since these transportation systems can affect the geography of regions and improve connections among economic actors. The third and final part consists of three chapters dealing with an area of recent significant research, that is, the economic and environmental impact of HSR. Chapter 8 investigates the effect of HSR on regional economic disparity during the period 2000–14 and provides evidence of convergence, which is to say that regional economic growth in China tends to follow a converging trend with HSR having a positive effect on reducing economic disparity among Chinese regions. Chapter 9 presents an analysis, at the national level, of the impact of China’s investments in rail infrastructure, from a combined economic and environmental point of view. Chapter 10 evaluates the regional economic impacts of the development of the rail infrastructure and shows that it is dominated by HSR. The authors show also that it has had a positive impact on national real gross domestic product. However, they note differences between the north and southwest regions of the country. The concluding chapter highlights the implications of this analysis for improving decision-making related to similar mega projects. The recent development of HSR in countries such as the United States, Russia, Korea and China calls for an understanding of its impact on social change and economic geography. One of the merits of this book is that while HSR developments have been studied in the context of the operations management literature (cf. Adler, Pels & Nash, 2010; Dobruszkes, Dehon, & Givoni, 2014), where the focus is mostly on efficiency issues related to HSR evaluations, the authors introduce a new economic geography perspective. Their investigation has several implications for policy related to public investment decisions. Overall, the book reveals the import implications of implementing HSR and the future development and well-being of countries and regions. For example, China’s spatial economy has been reconfigured. It is also particularly interesting when it provides the reader with details of the characteristics of China’s geography and changing socioeconomic conditions, such as the rapid urbanization of recent decades. Although the case of China has some unique characteristics and comparisons are difficult, the issues raised are likely to be relevant to other countries. Despite the robust evidence provided by the authors, the feasibility and economic benefits from investments of this type remain debateable. The publication of this book is timely due to the increasing attention on the topic from an economic perspective (cf. Vickerman, 2018). A promising future research direction would be to investigate the effect of HSR investment on the macro-economy, which would provide valuable insights for policy-makers.