Introduction to the issue: The state of the transport infrastructures in China

Abstract

This thematic edition of Policy & Society contains a set of seven articles about transport infrastructure policy in the People’s Republic of China. Though they all revolve around this central topic, they cover different facets, such as the influence of Confucian values on decision-making, its impact on macro-economic development and regional distribution, power relations within Public Private Partnerships, organizational and contractual relations in subway construction, the duration of decision-making processes and the viability of developing Transit Oriented Development in Chinese cities. This first contribution will sketch a general overview of two driving forces behind China’s motorization process (economic growth and urbanization), what the impact has been on the expansion of the transport networks and hubs and what social and policy problems Chinese authorities currently have to tackle as a consequence of these developments. It ends with a small prospectus of the other six contributions to this volume. As it has transformed from a centrally planned economy to a market economy since the late 1970s with the “opening-up” policies brought forward by Deng Xiaoping, China has experienced rapid economic growth of almost 10% per annum on average (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2009; OECD, 2010). Over the past three decades, China has regarded economic growth as a national priority to improve human welfare and eradicate poverty, while GDP as a primary economic growth indicator has been extensively used to assess the success of national or regional economic policies (Wen & Chen, 2008). National GDP increased from 455 to 39,798 billion RMB between 1980 and 2010. In the same period, per capita income rose from 463 to 29,940 RMB. Given the impressive growth performance, three globalized regional economies, those of the Pearl River Delta, the Yangtze River Delta and the Bohai Rim Bay Area, have continued to outperform all other regions in China (Fig. 1). These three regions, which together account for only 1.6% of China’s total land area, have contributed 12.3%, 27.4% and 26.3% respectively to China’s national GDP in recent years on average (Tuan, Ng et al., 2009). China’s geography. Capital investment (including domestic investment and foreign direct investment), international trade and capital accumulation are three key determinants for China’s rapid economic growth (Tuan et al., 2009; Whalley & Xin, 2010). China’s institutional reforms have fundamentally transformed the economic system through introducing decentralization and privatization: the transfer of economic-decision power from the central government to local authorities and the permission of (foreign) private investment in public infrastructures, which provides significant incentive for local authorities to build and expand the fixed assets of their localities with widening financial sources. This has resulted in large scale fixed-asset investment over the past three decades. According to the official statistics, fixed-asset investment relative to GDP rose from 20.0% in 1980 to 69.9% in 2010. On the other hand, the opening-up development strategy, together with preferential policies for foreign investors and outward-looking industries, has vigorously promoted China’s absorption of foreign direct investment (FDI) and international trade. Since the restriction on FDI inflows into China was removed in 1979 and a new foreign investment law was enacted in 1984, China has received a large amount of FDI flows and become the largest FDI recipient among developing countries. Usually, the FDI inflows are realized by establishing foreign invested enterprises (FIEs) in China, which are often joint ventures between foreign companies and Chinese enterprises. These FIEs account for about 20–40% of China’s GDP in recent years and without them China’s overall GDP growth rate could have been around 3.4% points lower (Whalley & Xin, 2010). Furthermore, international trade has produced a continuously growing trade surplus since 1978. China’s remarkable economic growth has been concomitant with an almost equally rapid growth in urban expansion (Deng, Huang et al., 2008; Ho & Lin, 2004; Lichtenberg & Ding, 2009; Lin, 2001, 2007; Zhou & Ma, 2000). Urban expansion, on the one hand, refers to the situation of spreading spatially outwards from the city to its outskirts, and on the other hand, it refers to the process of in situ urbanization of rural areas, i.e. the gradual abandonment of agriculture as a way of life in favor of work in rural industries (Friedmann, 2005; Yusuf & Saich, 2008). On a national scale, China’s urban land area increased by 817,000 ha in the period of 1990–2000 and sprawled even faster in the period of 2001–2005 by 849,400 ha (Han, 2010; Lin & Ho, 2005). And the most significant expansion often occurred in coastal city-regions (e.g. Liaoning, Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, etc.), especially in those large cities whose urban centers are surrounded by secondary cities and rural townships (Deng & Huang, 2004; Wei & Zhao, 2009). On a local scale, individual cities have been adding huge amounts of suburban land to their already urbanized areas. For instance, large cities such as Beijing and Guangzhou experienced growth in urban land use of 30–50% in the past 15 years (Han, 2010; Wu, Li et al., 2006; Yu & Ng, 2007). City agglomerations including the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region and the Pearl River Delta region expanded more than 70% in the 1990s (Li & Yeh, 2004; Tan, Li et al., 2005). In addition, small cities expanded even more rapidly than the large ones. In the Beijing–Tianjin–Tangshan region the urban area of small cities increased by 80% in the same decade (Tan et al., 2005). One widely discussed reason leading to the urban expansion in China is the growth of the urban population (Liu, Zhan et al., 2005; Tan et al., 2005; Wu et al., 2006). From 1978 to 2010, China’s urban population increased from about 172 million to 666 million and the level of urbanization rose from 18% to 49.7% (Han, 2010). Because of the growing difference in living standards between urban and rural areas, the pressure of urbanization is bound to increase further in the future. Urban expansion is therefore taking place in order to accommodate this population growth. Similarly, the economic growth and changes in the industrial structure naturally extend urban activities to the peripheral areas, and make rural areas industrialized. In addition, the rapid urban expansion is also a result of local government’s policy for economic development. New projects such as industrial parks in the urban fringe areas reflect the intention of the local government to promote regional economic growth by constructing infrastructures and setting up ancillary facilities to improve the competitive edge of the locality and attract outside investors (Deng & Huang, 2004; Wu, Xu et al., 2007). Such urban expansion necessitates changes in land use in Chinese cities (Lichtenberg & Ding, 2009; Lin, 2002; Wei & Zhao, 2009; Yang & Gakenheimer, 2007). While expanding outward, cities do not simply replicate their old fabrics in the new areas: fundamental structural transformation takes place. Traditionally, the pre-reform urban settlement in China included state and collectively owned enterprises that contained their own housing and commercial facilities along with their production activities. With the advent of the land and housing reforms introduced in early 1980s, the urban fabric has been altered in many different ways. Most evidently, many state-owned enterprises have moved their production activities to new suburbs while leaving the employees still living in the same localities to enjoy various urban amenities. And in most cases, new enterprises no longer stick to the traditional model of mixing workplace and residence. Housing supply has been subjected to the market mechanism. In addition, the centers of Chinese cities, formerly occupied by working class families, are transferred to business offices, retail stores and the governmental sector constituting Central Business Districts (CBDs). And households seek suburban locations with lower densities, less traffic and noise, and larger, more modern housing. Furthermore, when urban expansion is limited by urban boundaries set by the Chinese central government, Chinese cities start to develop anchor-institutions and satellite communities as new development zones which are connected with inter-regional railways or expressways. Additionally, the evolution of land use in large Chinese cities is towards a multi-centered city layout in order to avoid high traffic density in the urban core. China’s staggering developments in terms of economic growth and urban expansion have far-reaching impact on and pose challenges for its transport sector. This mainly refers to the ever growing traffic demand from individual users and the business sector, requiring constant network construction and expansion and involves almost countless amounts of land and funding. In the next section, we present the state-of-the-art knowledge on transport infrastructure development under these twin forces. Fig. 2 shows that almost all the transport modes have experienced rapid growth in passenger traffic demand from 1980 to 2010 after China’s economic reforms. The traffic flows concentrated on railways and roads, while the trend of road transport has exceeded rail since 1995. In addition, the volume of passengers who traveled by air in recent years is also increasing, given that more Chinese can now afford air travel with higher personal incomes, and under its economic boom an increasing number of foreign tourists and business travelers come to the country. In contrast, less and less people travel by ship because of the relatively low accessibility of inland waterways and long travel times. Therefore, over the past 30 years a tremendous transition took place among the transport modes in terms of their market shares. As we can see in Table 1, the share of railway transport for passengers has fallen by 29%, while the share of roads has increased roughly by 23%. In the same period, the share of air transport for passengers increased from 2% to 13.8%, and the share of waterway transport declined from 6% to 0.2%. Passenger traffic flows (in 100 million passenger-km). Transitions of market shares of different transport modes (1980–2010). Transitions of market shares of different transport modes (1980–2010). Apart from the long-distance inter-city transport, Fig. 3 shows that the numbers of passengers traveling with the urban bus system and urban metro system also experienced steady growth in the past decade. Passenger numbers travelling by bus increased from 24.6 billion people in 1995 to about 60 billion in 2010, while in the same period passengers using the metro system for trips grew from 0.45 to around 4 billion. Since 2000 urban subways and light rail received massive investments and the total metro length in the whole country reached 1469 km in late 2011. The growth rate of passenger flows by metro exceeded that of buses. However, the increase in the traffic flows by bus and metro does not imply that public transit enjoys a higher modal split relative to private vehicles. Rising per capita income among citizens in China and removing the restrictions imposed by the Chinese government on private car ownership have already led to a highly problematic level of motorization. During 1985–2010 the private car ownership in China increased from 284,900 to 86,060,000 (Fig. 4). As a result, mobility depending on automobiles in large Chinese cities accounts for more than 60% compared with the mobility by public transit. Urban traffic flows by bus and metro (1995–2010, in billion passengers). Private car ownership in China (1978–2010, in million). Table 2 shows the status of investment in transport infrastructures in China from 2001 to 2009, and we can see that the scale of the investment shows a massive increase from 243.2 billion RMB in 2001 to 2327.1 billion RMB in 2009. Grouped by mode, a majority of the investment was spent on road and railway constructions while only a small part was invested on urban, air and waterway transport. If grouped by different sources of financing, total investment from the fiscal budget of the central government ranged from 18.3% to 30.4%, and the remaining part came from local governments that may use their local fiscal budget, obtain loans from banks or otherwise attract private capital. When differentiating the investment by ownership, we can see that more than 90% of the investment was from public sources, only around 4–6% was private and a very tiny part from collective sources. Investments in transport infrastructures (2001–2009). Investments in transport infrastructures (2001–2009). Since the mid-1980s, China has invested massively in road infrastructure. The resulting expansion of the road network, has contributed greatly to, and has also been strongly stimulated by, China’s continuing economic development and the reduction of rural poverty (Fan & Chan-Kang, 2008). By the end of 2009, the total length of the road network was about 3,860,800 km, of which 65,100 km are expressways, compared with a figure of 1,698,000 km in total and 19,437 km for expressways in 2001. However, relative to the breadth and length of China’s geographical area and its large population size, its road network still ranks among the sparsest in the world in terms of density and coverage. Focusing only on expressways, the fast construction and expansion originated from the first approved “National Trunk Road System Plan” in the late 1990s. The plan was originally designed for a 35,000-km network including 5 north-south expressways and expressways. And the was billion RMB. By the end of of the planned roughly km, However, by the continuously traffic demand for roads, the Chinese central government expanded the plan into a Plan” in late to build Beijing north-south expressways and expressways, km (Fig. The is in and the total is 2 RMB. more than km have been network are to China’s economic development and social and railway transport is still the most used and for the of passengers and in large and long The length of railways in has increased from km in 1980 to about km in 2009. This expansion of the railway network up in recent years because of the of the and Plan” in (Fig. in the plan are to in when the total length of railways in roughly In to network expansion, the of this plan are to km passenger as as to of the to and the end of 2010, China has around km that are with new and and with the of foreign China has with a of in this plan new are planned in China. and railway network The air transport has been of in the 30 years as a result of and Over the same period, air transport in China has also been significant transformation the “opening-up” policies since In passengers and the only million passengers and million while the figure in has to million and Such rapid growth in air traffic of passengers and have been a result of the increase in leading to an increase in of air passenger transport, and the trend in the of which China has become a has been growing demand for air as China’s infrastructure has and 2009, the Chinese governments all invested billion RMB in constructing and By China has with a density of per are international of which have of and a of of for as as more than that could accommodate and regions, coastal and cities have modern In addition, areas, regions and areas with transport infrastructures also have Urban transit an in transport within urban areas as cities in China. And among the to traffic and huge investments in urban rail in Chinese have been to 1980 when urban rail could in Chinese cities, the total length of urban rail in reached km (Fig. And bus transit have also been from km in 1995 to km in 2009. In addition, the urban trips by Chinese citizens have also increased from billion in 1995 to around billion in 2009. Such an increase in urban traffic demand urban rail Urban rail are currently in Chinese cities. for and rail and new in 15 other Chinese cities. Transit are also or expanded in and The cities of and also on city subway constructions in Chinese cities. along with the twin developments of economic growth and urban expansion, China has experienced rapid transport infrastructure development in recent Such in terms of network expansion, has for accessibility the regional and the local This has been by various Li and the projects and their impact on the accessibility of individual and and and et the accessibility impact of the development of the and railway Xu et the impact of railways on the accessibility on the and a more by taking into account rail and road transport in the of regional accessibility in the Yangtze River However, while the huge are a of the transport sector has Since most of the transport projects are concentrated in central and regions in China, people new transport infrastructure will more regional accessibility or more development & Statistics have that large regional in the density and of road infrastructure in China, for The region is by roads compared to the central and coastal In only and km of roads for of land in and of China, compared to more than km per of land in and central all and are in roads, with a density of only km per of In addition, road is also the in the roads expressways, and class roads account for less than 6% of the road network (Fan & Chan-Kang, 2008). the especially for the passenger most have that their construction will increase the between cities and their et al., For after the of cities connected to this system while cities to this Xu et al., 2010). Apart from the in China’s transport infrastructure around the motorization and the that with it in urban areas. While cities most of them are changes in transport which in the growth of long-distance the trend of mobility and the increase in urban traffic demand Zhao, 2010). The growth of private car ownership in China, which has for people to their of and other has led to the of cities and to travel which impact on the urban problems in Chinese cities especially in large can by very low average and high of driving spent and and & 2009; & 2010). In the of the increase in including those of and air transport, not only in China also in other developing According to the the growth rate in by the transport sector in developing is 3.4% 2006; Zhao, 2010). In China’s motorization the transport use of increased from in 2001 to in of total and it is to in & 2008; et al., 2007; & 2009; & 2010; Zhao, 2010). This situation is more in large Chinese cities & 2008). Beijing as an the number of private in Beijing 4 million in and will still increase an rate of in the trips by private increased by while trips by public transport only increased by The transport sector in Beijing for of total urban and air to road transport was of total air behind the from industrial production 2009). In to the the travel also to higher numbers of traffic The that in the as a consequence of road traffic was that in and And in the same the of China was higher than in & 2009). As the in the points many impressive developments have place in the three when it to transport infrastructure many challenges still in terms of regional and income and and the and to with these In the remaining six contributions to this recent on transport infrastructure in China will and its In the next and will the into the of Confucian values and their modern impact on decision-making on transport infrastructures in China. are Confucian what are their and and to what can they for of infrastructure development in the most This amounts to for and who to the of their own also to Chinese and public for very have a In the and a into on infrastructure investments in China and make an to their impact on economic development that the economic impact of transport infrastructure investments is and after especially in the more of China. also come of regional within that large country and that it was a for the various governments to on investments in the of the that the macro-economic of on the central may very more than those forward the The by and takes to the of Public Private as to road construction and in China. 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