The characteristics of rail freight transportation and provincial factors in China

Abstract

In today's developing countries, especially China and India, populations are growing and levels of energy consumption are rapidly increasing as economies develop. Therefore, the problem of procuring energy for transportation is a major global challenge in the twenty-first century – particularly in China. Using the established regression model of transportation energy, we analyze the relationship between the distribution of cities and the level of rail freight transportation energy consumption in China. For a long time, studies on freight transportation in China have used qualitative analysis as the core analysis method and there has been less quantitative research. So the purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between the distribution of cities and rail freight transportation using quantitative research. The conclusions of this paper are as follows: first, this study reveals the primary factors that have an influence on rail freight transportation using the multiple-regression model. We can see that factors such as the degree of industrial development and coal-related industries have a significant impact on the level of rail freight transportation energy consumption. Second, through analysis of the independency of cities in China we found that China has significant regional disparities and that it is still quite difficult to set up independent urban regions in China.