IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/chinae/v32y2024i6p128-159.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does the China Railway Express Promote Equitable Regional Development? Evidence from Manufacturing Relocation

Author

Listed:
  • An Pan
  • Wenna Zhang
  • Yige Du
  • Xunpeng Shi

Abstract

The China Railway Express (CRE) has improved regional economic integration with external markets and has reshaped regional development by encouraging the relocation of manufacturing activities (“manufacturing transfer”). We analyzed data from 284 prefecture‐level cities in China to evaluate the impact of the CRE on regional manufacturing relocation, using a staggered difference‐in‐differences model with entropy balancing. We found that the launch of the CRE significantly stimulated the relocation of manufacturing industries to node cities – key hubs for transportation and logistics within the CRE network – especially in the central, western, and northeastern regions. Specifically, the CRE significantly increased manufacturing dynamism, firm profitability, openness, and foreign investment in node cities, which attracted more manufacturing industries to relocate in this area. Higher levels of infrastructure development moderated the CRE's effect. Further analysis showed that significant moderating effects of infrastructure development occurred only in the western region. Overall, our conclusions provide useful insights into how to promote equitable regional development through manufacturing development in China.

Suggested Citation

  • An Pan & Wenna Zhang & Yige Du & Xunpeng Shi, 2024. "Does the China Railway Express Promote Equitable Regional Development? Evidence from Manufacturing Relocation," China & World Economy, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, vol. 32(6), pages 128-159, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:chinae:v:32:y:2024:i:6:p:128-159
    DOI: 10.1111/cwe.12560
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/cwe.12560
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/cwe.12560?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:chinae:v:32:y:2024:i:6:p:128-159. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iwepacn.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.