The structural resilience of China's trade network based on transport modes
The transport system,serving as the foundational backbone for global trade movements,signific-antly influences the trading relationships among domestic cities and their integration into global production net-works.The existing literature has analyzed the global trade networks carried by a particular transport mode or investigated the resilience of the trade network regardless of its transportation modes,both of which neglect the transportation resilience in the global trade networks.In light of this,this study seeks to investigate the spatial evolution and structural resilience of trade networks facilitated by various transportation means through social network analysis coupled with scenario simulation techniques,based on city-level trade data extracted from Gen-eral Administration of Customs.P.R.China(2000-2015).The marginal contributions of this study can be summar-ized as:1)Systematically explores the evolution and characteristics of trade networks from the perspective of trans-portation modes,filling the gap in the existing economic geography literature where transportation networks and trade networks are disconnected;2)Clarifies the importance and changing process of specific cities in the trade network from the perspective of transportation mode complexity;3)Measures the resilience level of trade networks under spe-cific transportation modes and identifies alternative city transportation networks.The key findings include:1)Across all four transport modes,there is a consistent rise in trade network density,with waterways showing the highest density and railroads demonstrating the highest degree of network modularity.Such results indicate the maturity of waterway-based trade network and the limitations of track-dependent railway-based trade net-works.2)The development of the domestic transport infrastructure helps to mitigate the intricacy of trade con-nections between cities across different regions,particularly in terms of access to a variety of transportation op-tions.Inland cities now have more access to waterway-based trade networks,and coastal cities have developed complicated trade connections with Asian or European countries carried by railways or trucks.3)Among the transport systems,the waterway-based trade network demonstrates the highest level of resilience,followed by air-based and road-based transport networks.Over the past 15 years,the trade networks have been less depend-ent on top 15 ports for each transport mode,suggesting a higher level of resilience of each mode.4)The swift progression of airport infrastructure augments the availability of alternative cities that can respond to tempor-ary disruptions in air cargo-based trade activities,by either reduce the distance from nearest available backup cities or increase the number of nearby backup options,especially for cities in inland area.In summary,these findings offer valuable insights for national strategies aimed at refining major production configurations and bolstering the growth of strategic hinterlands.Firstly,the domestic transportation system plays a critical role of-fering various regions the possibility to develop multiple trade transport modes.Secondly,although railway transport along the Eurasian Land Bridge has developed rapidly in recent years,it still has limitations and falls short of the scale and system of waterway,air,and highway transport.Thirdly,when countries plan for pro-ductive force safety layouts,they need to explore potential alternative city locations based on existing foreign trade connections to ensure the resilience of foreign trade at the transportation level and smooth the transfer and handover processes between cities.
万方数据
维普
