It is widely believed that transportation infrastructure has important impacts on the development of cities. Until recently, however, there has been little systematic evidence with which to evaluate claims about the effects of transportation infrastructure on the development of cities and regions. In this paper, we describe the evolution of Chinese transportation infrastructure and how it relates to the evolution of location patterns of population and production in Chinese cities and surrounding regions. We summarize empirical evidence from our work with Loren Brandt, Vernon Henderson and Qinghua Zhang on the causal effects of various types of transportation infrastructure on the decentralization of Chinese cities. Finally, we put our results in context of the existing literature on the effects of infrastructure on productivity and the allocation of resources across locations.