REVITALISING THE SILK ROAD: EVIDENCE FROM RAILWAY INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENTS IN NORTHWEST CHINA

While China has experienced considerable urban economic growth in the past few decades, development has mostly been concentrated in the eastern and central provinces. Considerable challenges remain in developing and urbanising Western China, especially the counties and provinces along the old Silk Road, once upon a time a major trade route and source of prosperity for imperial China.

The paper focuses on a specific place-based policy that aims to promote economic integration between the eastern and western parts of China. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) introduced in 2013 is an ambitious plan to connect Western

China by land to Central Asia and Europe and the Lanzhou–Urumqi high speed railway (HSR) is the only HSR route in northwest China that supports the land corridors of the BRI. In this paper, we carefully analyse the effects of the opening of this HSR line on regional economic development along the Silk Road. Our results show that there are winners and losers from the opening of the Lanzhou–Urumqi HSR line. While there is some indication of the role that HSR can help play in making progress towards breaking through the Hu Huanyong Line, a geographical demarcation in China that is of vast economic significance, not all counties benefited from the opening of the HSR line.