基础设施投资地点在中国西部地区开发中的作用

The Role of Infrastructure Investment Location in China's Western Development By Xubei Luo Development of the western region is vital to the balanced growth of China. Luo studies the impacts of infrastructure investment that may most efficiently alleviate the burden of geographical remoteness of the West. Having constructed the "adjusted distance" to approximate the transport cost, which takes into account the effects of real distance and infrastructure development, the author defines the "peripheral degree" to measure the effective remoteness of a province to an economic center. Using panel data for 1979-99 from the Chinese provinces, she shows that geographic attractiveness plays a significant role in a Solow-type growth determination model. Given the invariability of pure geographic position, progress in transportation facilities is essential to reduce the geographic handicap and to encourage the catching-up of the western region. The author's simulation results show that the central transportation hubs (Hubei, Henan, and Hunan) merit most the infrastructure investments, for they favor the development of many provinces, if regional balanced growth is considered as the prime objective. In particular, improvement in the transportation facilities in central hubs will have greater effects on western development than that in the western region by itself. Improvements in the transportation facilities of the central hubs substantially improves the geographic attractiveness of the western region by reducing the transport cost from the West to the Coast and by promoting the emergence of new economic centers in such hubs, which tends to modify the national economic geographic structure. World Bank Working Paper 3345, June 2004 The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the view of the World Bank, its Executive Directors, or the countries they represent. Policy Research Working Papers are available online at http://econ.worldbank.org. Xubei Luo The World Bank Office of Senior Vice Presidency Dev Econ/Chief Econ (DECVP) MSN MC4-404 1818 H Street, N.W. Washington D.C. 20433 Tel: 1 202 458 1157 Email: xluo@worldbank.org  The Role of Infrastructure Investment Location in China's Western Development By Xubei Luo * 1. Introduction China, with a population of 1.3 billion and a surface of 9.6 million squared kilometers, has achieved great success since the late 1970s. The country's economic size increased more than 6.5 times in 21 years as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) increased from $145 billion USD (constant 1995) in 1978 to $964 billion USD (constant 1995) in 1999.1 Despite this great success of the economy as a whole, China has suffered from unbalanced growth among the different provinces: the coastal region is much more developed than the inland area due to more favorable geographic position and economic policies.2 In general, the farther away a province is from the coast, the weaker its performance is. In 1999, the GDP per capita of the western provinces was less than half of that of the coastal provinces. Such unbalanced regional growth hinders the further development of the Chinese economy. On one hand, the backwardness of the western region and resulting inequality of incomes across China undermines longer-term growth prospects and social stability; on the other hand, the underdevelopment limits the potential of domestic market enlargement, hindering the possibility of the relocation process of traditional industries from eastern regions to central and western ones. In addition to the topological and climatic disadvantages, the western provinces experience limited market accessibility due to their geographical remoteness from the domestic economic centers of the coast. We argue that it is the transport cost, which is * The author is indebted to Deepak Bhattasali and Paul Brenton for excellent comments. The author is also grateful to Henri-Fran