A Comprehensive GIS Database for China’s Surface Transport Network with Implications for Transport and Socioeconomics Research

We build a granular Geographic Information System (GIS) database that covers China’s national highways, modern motorways, traditional railways, high-speed railways, and waterways at an annual frequency from 1993 to 2020. After describing the database and its construction, we characterize the development of China’s surface transport network. Overall network length more than tripled after 1993. Modern motorways and high-speed railways, nearly non-existent in the early 1990s, account for half the increase in network length. The average distance between county centroids and transport access points fell by more than half, from 13.28 km in 1993 to 5.81 km in 2020. Common county-level measures of connectivity and centrality rose by 22% and 115%, respectively. We also show that discrepancies between distance to motorway access and straight-line distance to motorway routes are often large, and the discrepancies correlate with calendar time, terrain features, and economic development. Because motorway access is vital to local economic development in China, this finding raises the need to re-assess previous research that uses straight-line distance to proxy actual distance. Our GIS database is freely available on an open-access basis, creating an empirical laboratory for new research in multiple directions.