Abstract: Based on "National Medium and Long-term Railway Network Planning" and "National Highway Network Planning", this study selected Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan and Chongqing as the fundamental cities; by using ArcGIS and program platform of Visual Studio of 2008, calculated the travel time from cities in HSR-economic zones to the fundamental cities and made a China's HSR multi-center shrinking time-space map based on the map-making principles of 2D time-space map. Analysis shows that: (1) the percentage of time saved could reach as high as 34% within the 5 HSR-economic zones. The percentage of time saved could reach 50% for cities within the scope of 2-hour economic circle along HSR lines, or else could only save 30%-40% if beyond that scope. The percentages vary because the further the spatial distance is among these cities, the less travel time would be saved. (2) The HSR would reconstruct the spatial patterns of urban system in China. The evenly distributed model will be replaced by the clustered distribution and accordingly the linear features will disappear gradually. The important urban agglomerations include the following: integrated region of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and Jinan metropolitan area; the city-and-town concentrated area of Northeast China with Shenyang metropolitan area as a center; the city-town concentrated area in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, which includes urban agglomeration in the Central Plains with Wuhan metropolitan area as a center and Wanjiang urban agglomeration; urban agglomeration of the Yangtze River Delta; urban agglomeration of Pan-Pearl River Delta, which covers the Western Taiwan Straits Economic Zone and the Beibu Gulf Economic Zone. After 10-20 years, there will form some highly integrated metropolitan regions in China, while Beijing-Harbin and Urumqi-Xi'an and Chongqing-Nanning will become three major corridors. (3) There are significant differences in terms of the spatial organizational patterns of China's HSR economic zones, for instance, Shanghai and Guangzhou form a radial inflow model, Wuhan and Beijing belong to a "ring-layer" model, and Chongqing presents a centrifugal outflow model.

Key words: high-speed rail economic zone, 2D time-space map, regional economic distribution patterns, distribution of urban system