Disrupted and Rebuilt: The Untold Impact of City Network Restructuring on China’s Post-Lockdown Recovery

Disrupted and Rebuilt: The Untold Impact of City Network Restructuring on China’s Post-Lockdown Recovery | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Article Disrupted and Rebuilt: The Untold Impact of City Network Restructuring on China’s Post-Lockdown Recovery Zhen Sun, Ke Rong, Ruoming Lv, Xiaoxuan Tian, Hongjun Li, Danxia Xie, and 2 more This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-4702066/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Following the end of the zero-COVID policy, China’s economic recovery elicited high hopes but turned out to be disappointing in 2023. This paper provides a novel explanation for the slow economic recovery based on city network disruption and restructuring after major shocks. The supply-demand connections, once disrupted by lockdowns, could not revert to their pre-lockdown state after reopening. Instead, they underwent further restructuring, incurring considerable transaction costs. Using a unique dataset of 1,004,818 heavy trucks with over 600 million inter-city origin-destination records, we find that although freight workload started to grow following the lifting of lockdown measures, it remained below pre-lockdown levels even seven months after reopening. The observed recovery pattern is primarily driven by a surge in short-distance travel, contrasting with a decline in long-distance travel. We show that this shift signifies a restructuring process of connections within the city network, which takes time to materialize and might lack logistics efficiency. Moreover, this restructuring has reshaped the landscape of China’s economic geography. It strengthened the economic connections within city clusters while weakening those between them. Conventional economic growth poles and coastal cities experienced a sluggish recovery, whereas certain inland cities emerged as primary beneficiaries of the network restructuring. Finally, we provide empirical evidence that the city network restructuring is associated with previous disruptions induced by lockdowns. Our analysis offers new insights into the recovery dynamics of economies post major economic shocks from the perspective of city networks. Social science/Economics Social science/Complex networks Full Text Additional Declarations There is NO Competing Interest. Supplementary Files SupplementaryInformation.docx Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. Our growing team is made up of researchers and industry professionals working together to solve the most critical problems facing scientific publishing. Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-4702066","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":330914314,"identity":"d474e83a-1722-4335-8e0a-80117027c160","order_by":0,"name":"Zhen 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