Does high-speed railway speed up manufacturing agglomeration along the line? A case study of the Beijing–Guangzhou high-speed railway

High-speed railway (HSR) impacts the economic growth and industrial spatial structure of the cities along the line. The extant literature discusses the influence of HSR on the agglomeration of the service industry but pays little attention to that of the manufacturing industry. This article takes the Beijing–Guangzhou HSR in China as an example, uses panel data from cities along the line from 2006 to 2018, constructs a staggered difference-in-differences model, and examines the impact of HSR on the agglomeration of the high-, medium- and low-technology manufacturing sectors. The findings are as follows. 1. HSR promotes the agglomeration of the manufacturing industry in the cities along the line, but the impact varies across different sectors. Specifically, the high-technology manufacturing sector tends to conglomerate in cities along the line, whereas the agglomeration of the medium-technology manufacturing sector is inhibited. 2. There is urban and locational heterogeneity in the impact of HSR on manufacturing agglomeration. The smaller the city size is, the greater and more significant the changes in the spatial agglomeration of each manufacturing sector. The agglomeration of the manufacturing industry (especially the high-technology manufacturing sector) is significantly affected by HSR in central cities and their surrounding cities, whereas this is not the case in peripheral cities. 3. HSR helps small cities along the line gain access to borrowed size, which further promotes the agglomeration of the high-technology manufacturing sector but suppresses the agglomeration effect of the low-technology manufacturing sector.