Over the past forty years, China's rapid infrastructure development has attracted attention from domestic and international media, with some international reports not maliciously calling China an infrastructure maniac. These reports express such lamentation about the scale, speed, difficulty, and advanced technology of certain infrastructure projects in China. However, is China really an infrastructure construction fanatic? In other words, is China's experience in infrastructure development unique internationally? Liu Zhi and Liu Xiuying, researchers at Peking University–Lincoln Center, recently published an English paper titled "Is China's Infrastructure Development Experience Unique?" attempting to answer this question at the national level through historical data analysis and international comparison. This paper was published in February 2022 in the English academic journal Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies.
Since the reform and opening up, infrastructure construction has always been an important part of China's economic development. It not only meets the demands brought by economic growth and improved quality of life, but is also often used as a policy tool to stimulate economic growth. Today, China's various infrastructure systems are becoming more complete, and some technologies and services have led the world, such as 5G communications, high-speed rail, and ultra-high voltage transmission. However, by comparing China's infrastructure with economic growth and the speed and level of infrastructure construction in China with other countries, the authors found that, at the national level, China's infrastructure development speed is reasonable, and its trajectory is not unique in global experience.
First, the authors calculated the national income elasticity coefficients for various types of infrastructure in China, calculated by dividing the average annual growth rate of infrastructure stock over a given period by the average annual growth rate of GDP during the same period. For example, the last column of Table 1 in the English paper shows that all elasticity coefficients are greater than zero, indicating that infrastructure stock grows alongside GDP growth, and infrastructure also grows rapidly during periods of rapid economic growth. Additionally, the income elasticity coefficients for ordinary roads, railways, and electricity production are all less than 1, indicating that their growth rate is lower than GDP growth. The revenue elasticity coefficient for highways, high-speed rail, and mobile phone users is greater than 1, meaning the growth rate of these infrastructure stocks or services exceeds GDP. The stock of high-quality infrastructure is growing faster than that of ordinary infrastructure, reflecting the increasing demand for high-quality infrastructure services.
Second, the authors selected several major economies—including the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Germany—five high-income countries—and India for a comparison of infrastructure stock. As shown in Table 3 of the English paper, China's overall infrastructure stock is roughly equivalent to the development level of the five selected high-income countries. Except for road and rail densities being the lowest among all comparison countries, all other indicators fall between the levels of India and high-income countries. According to the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual Global Competitiveness Report released in October 2019, China ranked 28th in global comprehensive competitiveness across 12 fields, with infrastructure competitiveness ranking 36th globally. Based on comparative data from various countries and authoritative international assessments, the speed and level of China's infrastructure development are also not out of the ordinary.
Finally, the authors use a simple and intuitive diagrammatic method to compare the level of various types of infrastructure or the proportion of service population (access) with per capita GDP in China and other countries in 2015, to see whether the level of China's various infrastructure levels among many countries with different GDP levels is an outlier (Figure 3 in the English paper, with a red dot indicating China). At the same time, it also compares the growth rates of various types of infrastructure or the proportion of service populations in different countries from 2006 to 2015 (Figure 4 in the English paper, where the low end of each line represents the level of a country in 2006, and the high end represents the level of 2015; The red line represents China), but it turns out that China is just one among the nations, meaning China's experience in infrastructure development is not outstanding among chickens.
In summary, by comparing China's infrastructure construction with the country's economic development level and with other developed countries, the claim that China is an infrastructure construction maniac lacks empirical data support.
After the paper was published, the authors realized that the data used was too aggregated and failed to more accurately reflect the actual situation of high-quality infrastructure development in China in recent years. Therefore, we have specially supplemented and collected data on highways and high-speed rail from several comparable countries. As shown in Table 4, the proportion of expressways in China's total highway network length is high, but not far ahead. Notably, the proportion of high-speed rail in the total railway network length is far higher than in other countries. China's high-speed rail is developing rapidly, with latecomers taking the lead, thanks to new technologies and a tendency toward forward-looking investments. In addition, urban rail transit in China has also developed rapidly over the past two decades, which is related to the speed of urbanization, the development of megacities, and the spatial structure of high-density cities. High-density, compact megacities require the support of high-capacity, high-speed rail transit networks. From this perspective, it is understandable that the media focuses on China's rapid construction of high-quality infrastructure in recent years, leading to the term "infrastructure construction maniac."
Table 4: Proportion of high-speed rail and expressways
Note: Data sourced from World Road Statistics; International Union of Railways； Wikipedia.
In March 2020, the Chinese government proposed accelerating new infrastructure construction, including 5G base stations, ultra-high voltage transmission lines, high-speed rail, urban rail transit, electric vehicle charging facilities, big data centers, artificial intelligence, and industrial internet initiatives. In addition, the "National 14th Five-Year Plan and 2035 Long-Range Objectives Outline" and the proposal of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality targets all indicate that China's infrastructure development is at a turning point. To grasp the development trajectory of infrastructure, it is necessary not only to review past development paths but also to study the following questions: What are the main shortcomings in current infrastructure development? What new challenges are ahead? How can we address challenges to achieve high-quality and zero-emission development goals? This paper also attempts to answer these questions and explores the development direction of infrastructure construction in China over the next 20-30 years.
Paper link:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14765284.2022.2040074?src=&journalCode=rcea20
Note: Due to copyright restrictions of the journal, electronic versions of the papers cannot be provided here. Except for Table 4, other charts and figures in this article are screenshots of English papers.
Contributed by: Liu Xiuying, Liu Zhi
