Study On The Influence Of High-Speed Railway On High Quality Development In Ethnic Areas

In recent years,the high-speed railway in China's ethnic areas has developed rapidly,and the accessibility of regional transportation has been significantly improved.With the opening of the high-speed railway,the accelerated flow of production factors such as labor and capital has improved the efficiency of resource allocation,and the acceleration of the regional integration process has also promoted the evolution of the urban spatial pattern.These changes caused by the high-speed railway will eventually has a long-term and far-reaching impact on the economic and social development of ethnic areas.Since the 19 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China first put forward the conclusion that China's economy has changed from a stage of high-speed growth to a stage of high quality development,issues related to high quality development have received widespread attention.Recently,it has been identified as the theme of China's economic and social development in the 14 th Five-Year Plan and even in a longer period.It means that the development of ethnic areas in the future for quite a long time must also focus on the theme of high quality development.So,will high-speed railway help high quality development in ethnic areas with relatively poor development foundation? On the one hand,people expect that once the train rings,there will be ten thousand taels of gold and the high-speed railway can play a positive role in high quality development and help ethnic areas to achieve high quality development.But on the other hand,people are worried that once the high-speed railway links,people will be empty.High speed railway may cause siphon effect of big cities on small and medium-sized cities,even to the high quality development of small and medium-sized cities in ethnic areas.In response to the above expectations and concerns,this paper studies the impact and heterogeneity of high-speed railway on the high quality development in ethnic areas.In addition to the introduction and literature review,the specific research ideas of this paper are as follows.Firstly,this paper makes a statistical analysis on the current situation of transportation infrastructure development in ethnic areas,the characteristics of high-speed railway development,and the relationship between high-speed railway and economic and social development in ethnic areas.Then,based on the sample data of 50 prefecture-level cities in eight ethnic provinces from 2006 to2017,with labor,capital and government input as input variables and five development concept indicators under the new development concept as output variables,this paper measures the high quality development of prefecture level cities in ethnic areas by using Fare-Primont index method,and compares and analyzes the high quality development from two aspects: dynamic changes and regional differences.Thirdly,on the basis of the correlation analysis between high-speed railway and high quality development in ethnic areas,this paper uses the progressive Difference-in-Differences(DID)model to empirically test the overall impact and source of high-speed railway on high quality development in ethnic areas,the impact of different dimensions of development quality,and dynamics of the impact.Finally,this paper empirically tests the heterogeneity of the impact of high-speed railway on high quality development in ethnic areas from three aspects of development conditions,geographical location and traffic conditions.For the above research content,this paper mainly draws the following conclusions:(1)From the development of highway traffic and air traffic,ethnic areas are still depressions for the development of China's transportation infrastructure.The development of high-speed railway in ethnic areas shows obvious inter-provincial differences.High-speed railway development plans,high-speed railway opening costs,economic development level,economic scale,and population density may all be important basis for selecting cities for high-speed railway stations.The opening of the high-speed railway will not only play a positive role in economic growth,industrial development,and improvement of the income gap among residents in ethnic areas,but it will also have many non-economic impacts.(2)From 2006 to 2017,the fluctuation of Total factor productivity(TFP)in ethnic areas can be divided into three stages.The decline of TFP before 2011 is mainly affected by the decline of technological progress,while the fluctuation of TFP after 2011 is due to the joint effect of technological progress and resource allocation efficiency.From 2006 to 2017,the inter-provincial high quality development of the eight ethnic provinces showed an obvious convergence trend.From the perspective of the five development concepts,the differences in high quality development among cities in ethnic areas mainly come from innovative development and open development.(3)From a statistical analysis,high-speed railway has a positive correlation with the overall high quality development of ethnic areas and high quality development in different dimensions,but the correlation between the two differs depending on the region and the opening time of the high-speed railway.On the whole,the development level of high-speed railway measured by different variables has a significant positive impact on the high quality development of cities in ethnic areas,and the positive impact of high-speed railway on the high quality development of cities in ethnic areas is mainly due to its role in promoting technological innovation and economies of scale.From the five development dimensions of the new development concept,the impact of high-speed railway on the high quality development of cities in ethnic areas is mainly manifested in its positive effects on innovation and green development.From the perspective of dynamics,the impact of high-speed railway on the high quality development of cities in ethnic areas has a certain time lag,which is about the first three years after the opening.(4)The impact of high-speed railway on high quality development varies with the basic conditions of urban development,such as economic scale,industrial structure and financial pressure.The larger the economic scale and the higher the proportion of tertiary industry,the smaller the positive effect of high-speed railway on high quality development,while the greater the financial pressure,the greater the positive impact of high-speed railway on high quality development.High-speed railway has different influence on high quality development in cities with different geographical locations.Compared with the provincial capital(regional center)cities,high-speed railway has more significant impact on non-provincial capital(small and medium-sized)cities.Compared with inland ethnic areas,high-speed railway has a greater positive effect on the cities in border ethnic areas.As for the high quality development,the high-speed railway transportation also exhibits the characteristics of economies of scale,that is,the higher the density of high-speed railway network,the greater its positive impact on the high quality development of ethnic areas.From the above research conclusions,we can see that for the expectations and concerns mentioned above: First,as people expect,high-speed railway does have a positive impact on the high quality development of ethnic areas.Secondly,there is no need to worry too much.Although the impact of high-speed railway on high quality development in ethnic minority areas is heterogeneous,it seems to be more friendly to cities with relatively poor development foundation.On the whole,the results of this paper provide empirical evidence for promoting the high quality development in ethnic areas through high-speed railway,especially in small and medium-sized cities in ethnic areas where development is relatively poor.Compared with previous studies,this study has its own characteristics in three aspects: research perspective,research object and research method.From the perspective of research,this paper discusses the impact of high-speed railway on high quality development,rather than just focusing on the output effect of high-speed railway.The research object is mainly based on the layer and area data of cities in ethnic regions,not only the provincial level data.The research method is to use the total factor productivity measured by the Fare-Primont index method with the advantage of dynamic comparability to represent the high quality development,and to use the progressive DID model for empirical research.But at the same time,due to data limitations,when using the Fare-Primont index method to measure high quality development,the selection of output indicators is relatively single.After empirical testing,the mechanism by which high-speed railway affects high quality development is not further tested.Future research It can be further expanded from these two aspects.