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Traffic is an indispensable prerequisite for a tourism system. The “four vertical and four horizontal” HSR network represents an important milestone of the “traffic revolution” in China. It will affect the spatial pattern of tourism accessibility in Chinese cities, thus substantially increasing their power to attract tourists and their radiation force. This paper examines the evolution and spatial characteristics of the power to attract tourism of cities linked by China’s HSR network by measuring the influence of accessibility of 338 HSR-linked cities using GIS analysis. The results show the following. (1) The accessibility of Chinese cities is optimized by the HSR network, whose spatial pattern of accessibility exhibits an obvious traffic direction and causes a high-speed rail-corridor effect. (2) The spatial pattern of tourism field strength in Chinese cities exhibits the dual characteristics of multi-center annular divergence and dendritic diffusion. Dendritic diffusion is particularly more obvious along the HSR line. The change rate of urban tourism field strength forms a high-value corridor along the HSR line and exhibits a spatial pattern of decreasing area from the center to the outer limit along the HSR line. (3) The influence of the higher and highest tourism field strength areas along the HSR line is most significant, and the number of cities that distribute into these two types of tourism field strengths significantly increases: their area expands by more than 100%. HSR enhances the tourism field strength value of regional central cities, and the radiation range of tourism attraction extends along the HSR line.

Chinese railway has entered the “HSR era”, while the structure of “four vertical and four horizontal” railways for transit passengers is almost completed. Taking the Beijing- Shanghai High-Speed Rail (hereinafter referred to as HSR) as an example, this paper first explores HSR’s effects on the spatial structure of regional tourist flows using the social network analysis. Next, it notes changes in the accessibility of regional transportation. After analyzing the factors including initial endowment of regional tourism resources, hospitality facilities, the density of the regional tourism transportation network, and locations, the paper discusses the mechanisms through which HSR affects regional tourist flows. The study shows the following: (1) HSR’s effects on the spatial structure of regional tourist flows are manifested through the Matthew effect, the filtering effect, the diffusion effect and the overlying effect, and (2) the Matthew effect of HSR is manifested under an obvious interaction of the location, the initial endowment of tourism resources, hospitality capacity, tourist transportation network density and “time-space compression”. The filtering effect of HSR is manifested for those tourism nodes without favorable location conditions, endowment of tourism resources, hospitality capacity, or tourist transportation network density and without obvious benefits from “time-space compression”. Those tourism nodes that boast advantages in terms of location condition, endowment of tourism resources, hospitality capacity, tourist transportation network density and obvious “time-space compression” will become sources for the diffusion effect. HSR will strengthen the aggregation effects of tourist flow in these diffusion sources, which will thereafter diffuse to peripheral tourist areas, manifesting “aggregation-diffusion”. HSR has overlapped tourists’ spatial traveling range over large-scale spaces. However, the overlying effect is only generated in those tourism nodes with a favorable location condition, an endowment of tourism resources, hospitality capacity, tourist transportation network density, and obvious “time-space compression”.