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China’s growth miracle has been accompanied by a great leap forward in the development of transport infrastructure. This study examines and compares impacts from the quantity, quality, and structural aspects of transport infrastructure on regional economic growth in China as the country approaches an upper-middle income status. We also incorporate government’s development strategies into the framework for evaluating the growth effect of China’s transport infrastructure. Using a consistent and robust dynamic panel data system generalized method of moments (system-GMM) estimation for identification, we find strong evidence confirming that transport infrastructure contributes to regional economic growth in China during the period 2007–2015, as the country approaches its upper-middle income status. In particular, quality improvements in roads and railways and the structural upgrading of transport infrastructure significantly contribute to growth. However, we do not find that quantity expansion of the overall land transport network has a significant impact. Moreover, government development strategies that defy local comparative advantages not only detract from the growth rate but also potentially restrict the contribution of transport infrastructure. Lastly, the regional heterogeneity for Western China may differ across transport modes, particularly with respect to goods versus passenger transport and roadways versus railways.

The optimal reactive power dispatch (ORPD) is a major tool, and it plays a vital role for enhancement of the power system performance. ORPD is one multimodal, non-convex, and non-linear problem. Many elegant benefits can be obtained by using the renewable energy resources (RERs), but many technical issues related to the RERs including the stochastic characteristics of these resources due to continuous variations of solar irradiance and the wind speed lead to increasing the uncertainties of system. Thus, solving the ORPD problem with RERs is a crucial task. The contribution of the paper includes application a modified hybrid algorithm for solving the ORPD considering the uncertainties of the RERs and the load demand. The proposed algorithm is based on Fractional Calculus with Particle Swarm Optimization Gravitational Search Algorithm (FPSOGSA) which aims to enhance the searching capabilities of the conventional PSOGSA algorithm and overcome its tendency to stagnation. The proposed algorithm is tested on IEEE 30-bus system for reducing power losses and voltage deviation as well as enhancing voltage stability. The scenario-based method is employed to produce a set of scenarios from the uncertainties of load, wind speed and solar irradiance. The simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm for solving the ORPD problem with and without considering the uncertainties in the system. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm is superior compared with the state-of-the-art techniques in terms of the reduction of power losses and voltage deviations as well as the stability enhancement.