The widespread missing link phenomenon in transport networks has been identified in numerous countries. How regional economy responds to missing links has remained a ‘missing link’. This study aims to fill the gap through investigating the spatial–economic impacts of missing links on the regional economy in the case of missing national highway links (ML-Hs) in China. Taking the difference of the regional road accessibility values between planned and real scenarios, this paper finds that the spatial impact of missing national highway links on regional road accessibility varies across Chinese cities. Cities that are directly associated with missing national highway links or in Southwest China are most vulnerable to the road accessibility reductions caused by missing national highway links. We also estimate the spatial–economic impacts of missing national highway links on regional economy using prefecture-level cross-sectional data in China. Econometric results confirm that missing national highway links induced road accessibility reductions negatively associate with the regional economy in the maximum and minimum distance decay scenarios, implying that regional economy decreases with the increase in the level of missing highway links induced road accessibility reductions. Interestingly, cities with missing national highways are positively associated with regional economy, suggesting that the persistence of missing national highway links in developed cities is at the expense of less developed cities which are more sensitive to missing highway links induced road accessibility reductions. Such asymmetrical results provide empirical evidence on the distributive effect of missing national highway links on China’s regional economy.