Construction of an inter-city operation alliance for China Railway Express

The China Railway Express (CR Express), a key component of the Belt and Road Initiative, has experienced rapid growth in scale and influence since its inception. However, its development has been hampered by issues such as inter-city competition, a lack of information sharing, internal conflicts, and uneven development. This study developed alliances among subgroups of cities that operate CR Express and proposed a method for constructing such alliances and fairly distributing their benefits. This study used the convergent correlation (CONCOR) algorithm from social network analysis to construct the alliances, and then designed a benefit-distribution scheme based on a weighted asymmetric Nash bargaining solution to fairly weight each city and thereby helping to maintain the stability of the alliance. This study also performed complex network node evaluation based on structural hole theory and a comprehensive TOPSIS evaluation to determine reasonable benefit-distribution weights. To test the solutions, this study performed empirical research for the CR Express cities in China and established five alliances based on subgroups of these cities. The results provide guidance for the development of CR Express and references for future implementation.