Missing planned links in the Chinese national highway network : spatial pattern, accessibility reduction, and inter-jurisdictional conflicts in cross-boundary governance

Abstract

The missing planned link problem is often found in the transport networks in different countries. However, suspended road infrastructure projects are often overlooked by the spree of infrastructure construction, and receive insufficient scholarly attentions. The spatial characteristics, spatial-economic effects, and interjurisdictional conflicts behind the emerging missing planned links in cross-boundary regions remain unclear. This thesis aims to investigate missing planned links through the border politics perspective. We focus on examining the role of boundaries in the failure of boundary-crossing transport projects through the case study of China. First, this thesis identifies that the spatial pattern of missing links in the planned Chinese national highway network is geographically bounded with administrative boundaries. Administrative boundaries appear to be a critical barrier affecting the construction of cross-boundary infrastructures. Missing planned links are not simply geographical or economic, they are also administrative. The spatial pattern of missing planned links including the spatial occurrence pattern, length pattern, and locational pattern are significantly conditioned by the hierarchical administrative boundaries system in China. Apart from the barrier effect of boundaries, our results indicate that the barrier effects of administrative boundaries are hierarchical and horizontal on the spatial properties of missing planned links. The spatial pattern of missing planned links are conditioned by the administrative boundary network relationships. Second, this thesis reveals that the spatial-economic impacts of missing planned links display explicit regional disparities across the prefectural and above level cities in China. Cities directly associated to missing planned links or in the western periphery regions of the national highway network, are more vulnerable to the accessibility reductions caused by the missing planned links. Furthermore, missing planned links can affect regional economy by attracting economic activities from other regions, or distributing economic activities to other regions, which is known as the generative or distributive effects. Based on the case study of China, missing planned links are detrimental to China’s regional economy. Moreover, regional economy responses negatively to the interaction of the existing road network and the missing planned links in the Chinese national highway network, suggesting a substitutive relationship exists between these two systems of road networks. The thesis identifies that boundaries can be strategically used by state and non-state actors as a political tactic to compete over crossing-boundary projects, which is further complicated by the multiplex power relations in the cross-boundary region in China’s megacity-regions. The boundary-based jurisdictional logic manifests the inability of local governments in coordinating boundary-crossing projects, rendering the Pearl River Delta region increasingly resembles the geopolitical sphere in the European Union. In summary, this thesis argues that administrative boundary matters in cross-boundary projects. The administrative boundary system in China can exert divergent barrier effects on the spatial patterns of missing planned links. Cross-boundary conflicts accrued from the boundary regime in the megacity-region in China pushes (non-)state actors to strategically exploit boundaries to compete over cross-boundary transport projects. Finally, given the negative effect of missing planned links on the regional economy, the construction and coordination of missing planned links need a “beyond-boundary” governance framework.