Green Growth Effects of High-Speed Rail in China: The Role of Industrial Transformation

ABSTRACT

This paper presents the first empirical attempt to examine the impacts of high-speed rail (HSR) and industrial transformation on China’s ecological efficiency (EE), using a data set of 251 cities during 2003–2016. Results show that instituting HSR is beneficial to green growth; a one-point increase in HSR leads to approximately 2% growth in EE. The potential mechanism test indicates that HSR significantly improved EE through industrial transformation, and did so economically. We also found that HSR strengthened impacts of static and dynamic industrial transformation on EE. However, the productivity growth effect of HSR was not statistically significant.

KEYWORDS:

• High-speed rail
• industrial transformation
• green growth
• ecological efficiency
• heterogeneity

JEL CLASSIFICATIONS:

• C61
• Q32
• Q43
• Q56

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge and thank the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71903068) for financial support as well as the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2019M653301).

Conflicts Of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Notes

1. China, as the focus of our study, serves as an ideal research context to examine the impact of HSR on green growth. First, as of 2019, China maintains the world’s largest HSR network with a total length of more than 35,000 km. Second, prior research has rarely focused on the green growth effects of HSR in China.

2. EE simultaneously takes resource, economic, and environmental efficiencies into account (Huang, Xia, Yu, Zhang, 2018).

3. It is noteworthy that the first newly-built high speed passenger railway line (Qinhuangdao–Shenyang) began operations on October 12, 2003. Its current design speed and maximum operating speed are 250 km/h and 210 km/h, respectively. According to the International Union of Railways’ definition, HSRs include existing railways that have been upgraded to accommodate speeds of 200 km/h or more, or newly built railways that accommodate a minimum speed of 250 km/h. For this reason, this study included the Qinhuangdao–Shenyang passenger railway in the final sample.

4. The ratio of (i) the difference between industrial SO₂ generation and industrial SO₂ emissions to (ii) industrial SO₂ generation.