Evolution of regional transport dominance in China 1910-2012

doi:10.1007/s11442-015-1198-3

Abstract

Abstract:

Transport infrastructure plays an important role in shaping the configuration of spatial socio-economic structures and influencing regional accessibility. Although China’s transport infrastructure has been experiencing a rapid development in the last 100 years, there lacks a systematic examination of the complete evolution history of China’s transport development, particularly with all kinds of transport modes. This paper first aims to clarify the history of China’s transportation from 1910 to 2012, and divides its evolution process into five periods (1911, 1935, 1953, 1981 and 2012) whereby each period represents the preliminary development time for each transport mode. Second, the paper calculates the transport dominance and analyses its spatial distribution in each period, with county as the basic analysis unit. Transport dominance here is defined as an integrated indicator for evaluating regional transport conditions. The results demonstrate the following: (1) areas with relative good transport dominance have expanded from scattered dots such as Tianjin, Shanghai, Guangzhou in 1911 to extensive areas with each provincial city as cores in 2012; (2) transport development is improved by advances in transportation technology. The construction of modern transport infrastructures such as seaports, airports, high-speed rails (HSRs), and freeways lead the expansion of national territorial areas with good and excellent transport dominance and the increase of the value of transport dominance over time; (3) transport dominance is spatially unevenly distributed and exhibits resemblance with the expansion of transport network, which is closely related to China’s socio-economic development and policies.

Key words: transport dominance, transport infrastructure, spatial evolution, regions, history, China

Hao HU, Jiaoe WANG, Fengjun JIN, Nan DING. Evolution of regional transport dominance in China 1910-2012[J].Journal of Geographical Sciences, 2015, 25(6): 723-738.

Figures/Tables 6

Table 1

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Table 2

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Class	Subclass	Distance (km)	Weight	Class	Subclass	Distance (km)	Weight
Transport mode	Conventional railway	<20	2	Transport mode	HSR	<30	2
		20-40	1.5			30-60	1.5
		40-80	1			60-120	1
		>80	0			>120	0
	Highway	<10	2		Airport	<30	2
		10-30	1.5			30-60	1.5
		30-60	1			60-120	1
		>60	0			>120	0
	Freeway	<20	2		Port	<30	2
		20-40	1.5			30-60	1.5
		40-80	1			60-120	1
		>80	0			>120	0
City nodes	Central	<100	2	City nodes	Central	300-600	1
City nodes	city	100-300	1.5	City nodes	city	>600	0

Transport dominance		Year
Transport dominance		1911	1935	1953	1981	2012
Very poor	Number of counties	3011	2261	2052	1303	644
	Area (km²)	9,415,732	8,061,029	7,645,895	5,703,774	2,957,907
	Area percentage (%)	98.08	84.82	79.64	59.41	30.81
Poor	Number of counties	74	744	816	1145	521
	Area (km²)	88,093	1,335,486	1,547,199	2,873,956	2,143,983
	Area percentage (%)	0.92	14.05	16.12	29.94	22.33
Fair	Number of counties	0	75	168	504	1262
	Area (km²)	0	101,539	263,795	767,331	3,354,976
	Area percentage (%)	0.00	1.07	2.75	7.99	34.95
Good	Number of counties	0	5	34	99	384
	Area (km²)	0	5771	35,235	131,394	662,020
	Area percentage (%)	0.00	0.06	0.37	1.37	6.90
Excellent	Number of counties	0	0	15	34	274
	Area (km²)	0	0	11701	27369	384940
	Area percentage (%)	0.00	0.00	0.12	0.29	4.01

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