Economic Spatial Structure in China: Evidence from Railway Transport Network

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.