Recently, Professor Chen Xiaoguan and his team from RIEM published a paper in the top journal of development economics, Journal of Development Economics (JDE), revealing for the first time that the expansion of high-speed rail networks achieves "reducing quantity while increasing efficiency" in agriculture by enhancing total factor productivity. The findings integrate three major research fields: urban economics, agricultural economics, and environmental economics, contributing a Chinese approach to the coordinated advancement of a strong transportation nation and green development.

 On September 24th, the paper "High-speed railroads and local agricultural development" was officially accepted by JDE. Professor Chen Xiaoguang, as the co-first and corresponding author, collaborated with Professor Gong Binlei from the China Rural Development Research Institute of Zhejiang University, Professor Qin Zhilong from the China Western Economic Research Institute of Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, and Dr. Wang Xiaoli from the same university to complete the research. Based on micro-data from county-level to household-level from 2002 to 2015, the paper firstly confirms that although the expansion of the high-speed railway network has led to a "double reduction" of agricultural labor and farmland in less developed areas, it has increased total factor productivity by 8.7%, fully offsetting the decline in input and maintaining stable total grain output. The mechanism lies in local governments converting the economic increment of high-speed railways into infrastructure investment and fiscal incentives through "using industry to subsidize agriculture", accelerating agricultural modernization and promoting farmers' income increase. This provides a replicable Chinese solution for developing countries to simultaneously achieve food security and rural revitalization in the process of rapid urbanization.