The Impact Of High-speed Rail Network On The Unbalance Of Regional Economic Development

High-speed rail network of China is the largest throughout the world,carrying more than half of passenger traffic of China,also be expected to pull the economy of cities along the high-speed rail.As high-speed rail network gradually formed,193 cities has been connected.In the future,the high-speed rail line will continue to extend on the basis of "four vertical and four horizontal lines",and will form a more perfect and denser high-speed rail network of "eight vertical and eight horizontal lines".As a new type of fast transportation,the impact of high-speed rail on regional economic development along the line is increasingly obvious.We first analyze the characteristics of high-speed network from the perspectives of network and social network analysis method,and meanwhile,discuss the present imbalance in regional economic development.Then,based on the high-speed network of whole country,we identify the economic growth effect of high-speed network,and build model of quantile panel to discuss the different effect on the cities at different level of economic development and cities in different areas.Finally,on the basis of the calculation coefficient of Theil index,we establish another equation to discuss the impact of distribution of high-speed network difference degree on the degree of regional economic unbalance.Through theoretical and empirical analysis,we mainly draw the following conclusions:(1)From the point of network characteristics,China’s high-speed rail network properties have significantly improved every year.Among four area in our country,the eastern region has the absolute advantage position in the network,followed by the central region.(2)From 2000 to 2017,economic differences between the four regions and within the four regions were all improved in different degree,but the economic differences in western region have greatly expanded,and has not yet dropped to its lowest level.From the point of relative development rate,China’s regional economic gap between the provinces is not optimistic.(3)High-speed network plays a significant positive role in promoting cities along.the opening of the high-speed rail or not and the location in the network are both the important factors to affect urban economic growth.(4)For those cities with lowest or highest economic growth rate,the more important location in the network,the easier it is for its economic development.But for the city in the middle or lower level of development,there is no significant effect on its economic development.(5)In the region,the different distribution of location in the network have a significant effect on the regional economic disparity.From the perspective of the whole network,the more balanced the capacity of node cities to trade and control resources in the high-speed rail network,the more beneficial it is to improve the unbalanced state of regional economic development.However,in the sub-networks of the four regions,this effect is most significant in the western and northeastern regions,while in the eastern and central regions,the opposite effect occurs.